“How does the everyday, claustrophobic greyness of the office metamorphosize into a sensual, surreal poem? With deft lyricism, wry compassion, and a precise eye, Arleen Paré leads us into a unique and dreamlike world. In this startlingly original first book, Paré has spun gold.
~ Miranda Pearson, author of Prime and The Aviary

“Moving between the need for due diligence and the extremes of urban nightmare, Paper Trail questions what it means to work in the post-industrial, precariously post-human world. Arleen Paré’s feminist, poetic, experimental narrative raises Kafka as the post-modern Cain, making the absurd real and the real starkly carnivalesque.”
~ Tanis MacDonald, author of Fortune and Holding Ground

“Arleen Paré’s new book is as sharp as a paper cut, as startling as a dial tone in the night. Paper Trail introduces a wonderful new talent: a writer who is not afraid to be poetic in her prose as she explores crucial moments in a working woman’s life. She delivers a truly Kafka-esque vision of life within a bureaucracy.”
~ Lynne van Luven, editor of Nobody’s Mother

“Paré’s compressed, lyrical language and memo-prose forms astutely evoke the coded innuendo of bureaucrateze ... As corporate values unquestioningly migrate into the arts, education, health care and governance, Paré’s literary encounter with this subject is not only timely but invigorating. Brava!”
~ Betsy Warland, author of Only the Blue and Bloodroot