Claire Cameron's "The Line Painter," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Claire Cameron's The Line Painter.

The author writes:

It's not hard for me to think of The Line Painter as a movie, because it was a film before it became a book.

When I write, I play a movie in my head. I stare at the wall while my characters mark their spots and rehearse their lines. I watch each scene on small screens that I store on the inside of my eyelids.

Translating the film in my head into a novel involves selecting small details that will bring the story to life on the written page. Instead of watching a character smoke, I describe how his fingers grip a cigarette. Rather than pan across a magnificent sunset, I focus on the one moment when the rim of the sun dips down.

This to say, I've thought a lot about who might play my characters. [read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s 1:08 a.m. when Carrie’s car breaks down on the highway somewhere north of Lake Superior. It’s dark, the road is quiet, her cell phone is down, and she is alone. She took off from Toronto that morning, running from grief over the death of her boyfriend, and unable to cope with the truth about the events that led to it. The relief Carrie feels as a truck pulls up soon turns to fear after its driver offers her a lift. Frank, her would-be rescuer, is a line painter, putting lines on the road “to stop people from being killed.” But after Carrie gets in the truck, she starts to realize that this will be the road trip of her life—a trip of terror, transformation and forgiveness.

Claire Cameron has created a unique portrait of Carrie, a young woman whose actions are driven by grief and shame, her personality a beguiling combination of naïveté and streetsmarts. Frank is equally sharply drawn, his flashes of humour and tenderness disguising the wreckage within. Written in spare, unvarnished prose that brims with menace against the forbidding backdrop of a northern landscape, The Line Painter takes us on a riveting trip down a twisted road of memory and redemption.

Among the praise for The Line Painter:

“Suspenseful, evocative and well-paced, this road trip story of guilt and love offers glimpses into tragically human characters who inhabit the margins of redemption.”

--Ibi Kaslik, author of Skinny

“An old B-movie premise — Car Breaks Down in the Middle of Nowhere — is given a fresh, distinctly Canadian twist in this wicked little first novel. The Line Painter fires along on its lean language and propulsive suspense, the kind of story you could swallow whole once you’re past the first page. I certainly did.”

--Andrew Pyper, author of Lost Girls and The Wildfire Season

"A masterful balancing act of suspense and relief.... [Claire Cameron] creates a tension that will have most readers squirming in their seats, eagerly leaping from short chapter to short chapter. It's a bravura performance."

--The Globe and Mail

Read an excerpt from The Line Painter and learn more about the novel.

Visit Claire Cameron's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Line Painter.

--Marshal Zeringue