In this frank and unfor­get­table book, cel­e­brat­ed Québé­cois writer Alex­ie Morin becomes the sub­ject of her own sto­ry as she places a child­hood friend­ship under a micro­scope. An auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el set in a small indus­tri­al town in Que­bec dur­ing the 1990s, Open Your Heart recounts the sto­ry of a dif­fi­cult friend­ship between two girls brought togeth­er by ill­ness and oper­a­tions suf­fered at a young age. One girl suf­fers from severe stra­bis­mus, while the oth­er was born blue. The first, defi­ant, feels that some­thing is wrong with her, while the sec­ond is an angel­ic child loved by all. One becomes a writer, and the oth­er dies at eigh­teen, dur­ing an oper­a­tion that should have saved her life. In this debut nov­el, Morin stakes out an excep­tion­al pur­suit for truth in these old mem­o­ries as she grap­ples with death, love, bond­ing and solitude.