This is the fourth Pick-A-Plot book from Conundrum Press written and illustrated by Tjia, and it’s the first in the series to feature a protagonist that isn’t a feline. Instead, as the title makes obvious, you are the mother of Alice Liddell, the reputed inspiration behind Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
When I listen to local classic rock station CHOM, large chunks of the commercial breaks are devoted to the corporate owners’ satellite network and to hawking ad time on the station – not a good sign. Into this twilight era, like an only-slightly-premature obituary, comes local author Ian Howarth’s Rock ‘n’ Radio, a passionate paean to the golden age of the airwaves here in Montreal.
It’s easy to see why Dominique Scali’s first novel, In Search of New Babylon, was a finalist for the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, the Prix des libraires du Québec, and winner of the 2015 First Novel Award at the Festival du Premier Roman de Chambéry in France. The story is tightly woven and executed with masterful shifts in chronology and narrative focus. The characters are quirky and compelling. The language of W. Donald Wilson’s translation sings with rich detail. Short, staccato-like chapters propel the story forward with the pacing of good television. This is in no way meant as an insult – seamless storytelling is difficult to achieve, and Scali accomplishes that with virtuosity in this novel.
The new issue of the international magazine Granta dedicated entirely to Canadian writers, a first for the publication, feels a bit like a simple, local literary reading – a number of different voices with different perspectives all sharing the same stage and conversing with one another. Featuring stories, essays, and poems, some of which were translated into English from French, the Canada issue of Granta is also, with a few exceptions, not at all what you would expect it to be.
Six Degrees of Freedom, Nicolas Dickner’s story of the mysterious journey of a rogue “phantom container,” follows characters who have a healthy sense of wonder but are determined to make something of that wonder too, impatient as they are with the pedestrian uses humankind makes of its own inventions. The novel, translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler, doesn’t indulge much in romantic reflection; its characters move too quickly for that. They’re dreamers, but they also do.
Jacques Filippi and John McFetridge have assembled an impressive roster of Francophone (most translated by Katie Shireen Assef) and Anglophone writers for Montreal Noir, the second volume in Akashic Books’s long-running Noir series to feature a Canadian city. As per the format of the series, which began with Brooklyn Noir in 2004, each of the fifteen contributors sets their story primarily within a specific Montreal neighbourhood or area.
Trauma Castle is a zine I’ve bought several times as gifts for loved ones. When I brought it home the first time, my partner read the zine over my shoulder one evening and was rendered speechless. She was speechless for two reasons: she was shocked at the violence Billy had experienced as a child, which they were describing in the zine, and she was impressed that the intimacy, terror, and complexity of that violence were being shared.
Armand Gamache is now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec. He’s in charge, the boss of the whole Sûreté, but to deal with the great challenges that await him, he surrounded himself with his usual, trusted team. After cleaning out the corruption that had taken over the Sûreté, he now needs to stop, or at least put a serious dent, in the province’s crime levels. That, and solve another murder in Three Pines.
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.
Getting Out of Hope, James Cadelli’s debut graphic novel, opens with a literal cliffhanger: Justin and his two friends, a trio of hippie dudes from “Halifax-ish,” are road-tripping across the country in a creaky RV, having pledged to “do anything and everything that’s fun, funny and dumb.”
