Lesley Trites

When Tessa, a jaded Montreal real estate agent, meets her new client Évelyne, she is quick to diagnose the situation. “I do this week in, week out,” she says. “Guessing each client’s household drama has become second nature to me.” Divorce, of course, tops the list, and Évelyne, to whom Tessa mentally assigns a blubbering, “suffocating” husband, is no exception. So begins Hunting Houses, the English translation of Quebec playwright and translator Fanny Britt’s first novel, Les maisons.

With The House on Selkirk Avenue, Karafilly offers a richly seductive account of a love affair with and in Montreal, balanced by a realistic portrayal of a woman confronting middle age, obsessed with the passing of time. Readers who allow themselves to fall under its sway will be rewarded.

To enter the world of Jacob Wren’s novel Polyamorous Love Song is to enter a bizarre yet compelling dreamscape, a parallel universe where everyone is an artist (regardless of whether they produce physical artwork or not) and where revolutionaries don mascot uniforms and risk death for their cause, the politics of which are left ambiguous.