More recently, reading essays and reviews on other books by Arcan, I have found it frustrating to discover that it seems impossible to write about her prose without first writing about her body.
By Geneviève Robichaud
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Reading Mike Steeves’s Giving Up can be uncomfortable. It’s full of the psychic detritus that floats around our brains from moment to moment: self-doubt, fear, justifications for unhealthy behaviour, petty grudges we can’t let go of, obsessive attention to the slog that can plague the pursuit of our goals and dreams. Optimistic perspectives are disregarded and replaced with cynicism. And on top of this, the novel is a thorough dissection of an ongoing relationship.
By Dean Garlick
In 1990, Paul Almond (OC) retired from his career as a television and film screen writer, director, and producer and embarked on a new career path as a novelist. His Alford Family Saga is a series of eight historical novels chronicling the arrival of his ancestors in 1880 to the Gaspé region of Quebec, and their subsequent settlement there. Each novel follows a different male protagonist along the Alford family line and offers stories about personal struggle, overcoming the odds, and love set against the backdrop of historical events.
By Deanna Radford
In recent years, Mile End has endured more than its fair share of mythologizing. The supposed beating heart of Montreal’s artistic lifeworld, not to mention the first thing you think of when you hear “hipster” and “gentrification,” the neighbourhood is almost a caricature of itself, an imaginary Sesame Street dreamed into being by someone who reads exclusively VICE, Kinfolk, and Japanese post-rock blogs.
By Anna Leventhal
Her memoir, The Permanent Nature of Everything, is a reflection on her early years from birth until her first year of high school. It also involves a great deal of historical excavation, an attempt at uncovering the lives of her parents and grandparents.
By B. A. Markus
Pain and Prejudice is a rare account of one woman’s scientific career. Messing has an easy style – personal and personable, earnest and engaging. The book is a lively portrait of a committed scholar doing science with and for people
By Elise Moser
Often, we take trees for granted, seeing them as part of the mosaic that forms the backdrop of our lives. Yet as Chester highlights in her fascinating guide to Montreal’s arboreal life, Island of Trees: Fifty Trees, Fifty Tales of Montreal, these trees should be valued as sacred spots where “the earth resurfaces” as “islands” in the waters of a built environment.
By Andrea Belcham
Like the twenty-nine other pithy contributions, “Salut King Kong” is no longer than 1200 words. The stories are short and seldom (too) sweet; they showcase established talent as well as new voices. It’s a Montreal book timed perfectly for a Montreal metro ride.
By Sarah Woolf
Sometimes, the most natural way to grieve a loved one is by grieving someone else. In Guyana, Élise Turcotte examines personal and collective grief, guilt, and dreams through the eyes of three Montreal residents: Ana, her son Philippe, and their hairdresser Kimi.
By Crystal Chan
Denyse Baillargeon’s effort to provide a comprehensive overview in A Brief History of Women in Quebec, from the arrival of Europeans to the present day, produces a concise and clearly erudite introduction to the topic. Despite an attempt to provide a wide-ranging narrative, however, the book’s contents remain slanted towards a more thorough and energetic engagement with the history of the twentieth century.
By Danielle Barkley
The legend of Lynda Barry began, for me, when I heard that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, refers to her as “the Funk Queen of the Galaxy” – and even asked her to marry him.
By Nina Pariser
In the Jewish tradition, fragments of worn-out holy books are not discarded when they are past use; instead, they are buried in a cemetery or subterranean storage room. In these underground genizot, the name of God is protected from destruction. The holy fragments – sheymes – provide Elizabeth Wajnberg, a child of Holocaust survivors, with a powerful metaphor for the recollections she patches together in her memoir.
By Sarah Woolf