Even though a Montreal winter rages throughout the pages of Louise Dupré’s The Milky Way, the novel remains easy reading material for the beach. Montreal architect Anne Martin finds true love with Alessandro Moretti, an jovial Italian scholar she meets at a conference in Tunisia. The attraction is instant; they correspond by e-mail; Alessandro comes to spend Christmas with her in Montreal; she decides to join him in Rome. It looks like they will live happily ever after.

Their story is eventually darkened by several female victims lurking in the background: Anne’s saintly mother who was abandoned by Anne’s father but who has taken care of her sister-in-law for decades; Anne’s aunt, who suffers from an unnamed type of madness; and Anne’s neighbour, who leaps from her luxury high-rise apartment.

Their tragic tales do lend the story some depth, as does Alessandro’s professional interest in the cemeteries of the ancient Roman and Phoenician city of Carthage, near what is now Tunis. However, when Anne sets out to learn something about the civilization that built Carthage, she doesn’t learn much of interest. The deeper, symbolic connection between Alessandro’s research and the sad women who surround Anne is also never made clear. As in a botched thriller, clues are laid on the table, but they don’t unravel the mystery.

This is not a botched romance, however. The love scenes sing, the descriptions of Montreal in the snow capture the extravagant and cruel beauty of winter, and the translation by Liedewy Hawke does justice to the poetic language of Dupré’s original.