Cora Siré

Diane Delaunais, the main character in Marie-Renée Lavoie’s novel Autopsy of a Boring Wife, is (despite the title) not at all boring. After Jacques, her husband of twenty-five years, unexpectedly leaves her and their empty nest near Quebec City for a younger woman, Diane’s equilibrium (if she ever had any) spirals out of orbit. Trying to regain her footing, she lurches from scene to scene in escapades often featuring her sympathetic friend Claudine.

In this intricately layered book, a cross-genre narrative encompassing memoir, biography, goodbye letter, and poetic socio-historic treatise stretching from Vancouver to Montreal, Erín Moure reminds us that memory transcends mortality, that in our rawest grief, love and reflection can offer the greatest shelters. The disclaimer upfront avows that “memory is a work of the imagination.”

Alfredo Cutipa, the protagonist in Alejandro Saravia’s novel Red, Yellow, Green, is a Bolivian in his thirties residing in Montreal. Burdened by the past, he now haunts the city, its streets, metro, cafés, and bars. His entanglements, including a love affair with a Kurdish freedom-fighter named, of all things, Bolivia, collide with his memories to set off consecutive detonations in a labyrinthine narrative that lodges like shrapnel – bracing and painful.