Sometimes there are very small books, like this one, which manage to give us a few hours of pure pleasure in a completely playful tone.
Albertan Wayne Arthurson is best known in our country for his thrillers, published by Alire in recent years. This novel, which won the Arthur Ellis Prize after its original publication in English in 2019, tends more towards absurd humor with its absolutely irresistible deadpan side, which will please fans of other titles published by Héliotrope such as Holy Peaceby André Marois, or even The Fugitive, the Cop and Bill Ballantine, by Eric Forbes.
The narrator, M, spends his days crisscrossing the city handing out tickets to citizens who break municipal regulations. He lives with his two brothers and leads a well-ordered, uneventful life, almost boring. On a street where he ends up to investigate a garage sale that breaks the regulations, he is drawn to a red Chesterfield armchair abandoned in a ditch. But, surprise, he discovers a severed foot in a shoe and becomes one of the prime suspects. Both disoriented and elated by these events that disrupt his meticulously regulated daily life, he makes a series of blunders, completely obsessed with the red Chesterfield.
Ultimately, he will have to learn to let go while we, on the other hand, will have to accept that some questions remain unanswered when we close the book. Because sometimes, “it’s okay to let go,” as he says, and simply let yourself be carried away.
The Red Chesterfield
Heliotrope
186 pages