Can telling stories help us outrun death – or at least assuage our fear of it? In Thomas Trofimuk’s new novel, Saudade, the main character certainly hopes so.

Saudade is the award-winning author’s sixth novel. Its title is a Portuguese word meaning, says Trofimuk, “a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; the love that remains.”

In it, Bruce and his wife, Pilar, who loves telling long, convoluted stories, are on vacation in Mâcon, France. Bruce is haunted by a fear of death, as if it’s lurking nearby.

Pilar asserts that if he can hide in a story long and complicated enough, death won’t be able to find him. So she tells him such a tale – and then disappears. Bruce must decide whether to call the authorities or to try to find her himself, following clues left in the tale she spun for him.

Fans of Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller will appreciate the tangents and narrative reframing that Trofimuk builds into Pilar’s story, and Bruce’s quest to find the people in it as he follows Pilar’s trail. At one point Bruce even travels to the Italian author’s hometown of Sanremo.

“Calvino plays a role simply because he is a favourite of mine,” says Trofimuk, “His playfulness. His fearlessness. His elegant intelligence.”

Bruce misses Pilar, infusing the novel with saudade, but Trofimuk keeps a light touch given the prospect of outrunning the inevitable. “It was fun to take a simple story: a man leaves his lover in bed and goes to the hotel’s restaurant for his morning coffee. And then digress, and shift, and dance, and find abstract storylines that swerve wildly – as if Death were chasing me.”

As for that notion – can we really defy death through the stories we share? – Trofimuk says he’s fascinated by the tales everyone has, and he’s always open to hearing new ones. They all have something to reveal, he says, whether they are simple or complex.

Bruce’s quest takes him to Lyons, Palm Springs, Seattle, Lake Louise, and Sanremo (all places, except for the last, that Edmonton-based Trofimuk has visited himself). The reader is drawn into Bruce’s obsession that Pilar is leaving clues for him.

“We’re with him as he goes on this journey,” says Trofiumk. “Is he a reliable guide? Probably not. Is he a fascinating guide? I’ll let readers have the final say on that.”

Bruce’s experience of literally following Pilar’s story does lead him to answers, surprising though they may be, and he is ultimately changed by the experience. Maybe that’s just the elegant power of narrative – in fiction, and in our own lives.

“One of the most beautiful and original and intimate things we can do for each other is tell stories,” Trofimuk says; and maybe, in adding his own take on them, the novel can spark a discussion about how we interact with each other, what we share with our fellow humans.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if we started to shut off our social media accounts and instead, met in cafés or wine bars and told each other stories?”