The version that interests no one, Emmanuelle Pierrot (Le Quartanier)
With this hard-hitting, visceral and deeply intelligent first novel, Emmanuelle Pierrot takes us into the wild and unforgiving splendor of the Yukon. Through the journey of a young woman whose quest for freedom is annihilated by threats, exclusion and harassment, the writer takes a radically lucid look at misogyny, the group effect and the mechanisms of violence. marital. With her subversive prose anchored in the details of everyday life, the author places herself at the junction of Kerouac and Despentes, in a captivating story that has heart in its stomach.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
What I know about you, Éric Chacour (Alto)
Rarely has a first Quebecois novel enjoyed such dazzling momentum. Named in the first selections of the Femina and Renaudot prizes, What I know about you tells the ambitious story of the exile of a young doctor from Cairo to Montreal, between 1961 and 2001. Equipped with a chiseled and sensual pen, Éric Chacour probes the soul of a man torn between two worlds and two eras , thus painting the ardent and luminous portrait of a society in full change. Through bold narrative choices, the author avoids neither pain nor mourning, which he nevertheless drapes with a welcome surge of tenderness. Dazzling.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Dédé, Christian Quesnel (Free Expression)
The impressive trajectory of cartoonist Christian Quesnel, who has the gift of touching on delicate subjects, is confirmed with this album dedicated to the life of singer Dédé Fortin. Built from numerous meetings with the singer’s entourage and meticulous research work, Dédé paints a fair and sensitive portrait of the complexity of a being whose public persona had taken on a disproportionate place, to the detriment of his health. With, as a bonus, magnificent drawings!
François Lemay
The count is good, Louis-Daniel Godin (La Peuplade)
Do you owe someone a debt when you are adopted? Based on this question, a boy who arrived in his family at the age of five days dissects the coincidences, anecdotes and significant memories that fill his journey in an effervescent and eminently funny thought exercise, where numbers reign supreme. Inspired by the discursive rhythm of psychoanalysis, Louis-Daniel Godin plays with the motifs of repetition and distancing to highlight the absurdity of the world and the quest for identity. Prodigious.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Galumpf, Marie Hélène Poitras (Viola)
Novelist, short story writer, editor, contributor to Duty, Marie Hélène Poitras has just won the Governor General’s Literary Award in the Novel category for this collection of short stories in which she juxtaposes unpublished texts and texts published over the years, reworked for the occasion. And it runs through the whole thing with a golden thread which gives it a cohesion, an elegance and a captivating relevance. The themes are familiar. The links, subtle. Emotion is plural. And the author, everywhere.
Sonia Sarfati
Holy Peace, André Marois (Héliotrope Noir)
Can the desire for holy peace make you want to murder? Certainly. André Marois proves it with this invigorating novel steeped in humor as dark as the setting where it takes place is snow white. In her property with a breathtaking view of nature, Jacqueline, at the age of seventy or so, is ready to do anything to avoid losing her tranquility threatened by the possible sale of the neighboring house. Go from awkward old lady to unrepentant killer? Certainly.
Sonia Sarfati
Mitis salmon, Christine Beaulieu and Caroline Lavergne (La Bagnole)
Adapted from a play that was performed in the heart of the Jardins de Métis during the summers of 2021 and 2022, Mitis salmon invites us to play the role of a salmon going up the Mitis River to the spawning ground. At the confluence of documentary and poetry, Christine Beaulieu articulates an ingenious reflection, rooted in empathy. An approach supported by the illustrations of Caroline Lavergne, of a beauty which oscillates between immersive realism and captivating impressionism.
Yannick Marcoux
I let the children disappear, Marise Belletête (Noroît)
Marise Belletête recreates her genealogical quilt and takes her place at the end of this lineage of women who gave birth to her. With the skill of a fine weaver, she claims, questions and pays homage to their heritage, while taking stock of the burden that falls to her. This masterful collection carries, with grace and deprivation, the fatigue, the resentment, the violence, the pain, but also the beauty, the strength and the hope of these women, at the heart of an unfinished fight.
Yannick Marcoux
Introduction to endless life, Vincent Lambert (Boréal)
With this essay made up of twenty-five texts, Vincent Lambert sets out to probe our relationship with the world, taking literature as its starting point, which is “like dreams, the great reservoir of our potentialities”. Focusing on a malleable reality and the lot of our certainties, he gives us an ecological thought, which seeks a balance between our individuality, the human community and the living world, at a time when the bankruptcy of this cohabitation seems imminent.
Yannick Marcoux
Lourdes, Catherine Lemieux (Boreal)
Second novel by Catherine Lemieux (A rare condition, Triptych, 2018), Lourdes is a scathing campus comedy that takes place during a day of conference dedicated to a little-known – and imaginary – Russian poet. A scathing satire of a certain feminism and of a university environment where professors and students thrive on slogans and clichés. A book for happy few which is also a rolling fire of humor and freedom, carried by sentences with precision as dense as they are manic.
Christian Desmeules
Godin, Jonathan Livernois (Lux)
First biography dedicated to the poet, journalist, editor, politician and humanist Gérald Godin (1938-1994), who shared the life of the singer and actress Pauline Julien for thirty years, Godin brings back to life this man who for many embodied an uninhibited Quebec nationalism open to the world, “progressive hero” and “champion of diversity” within the government of René Lévesque. A window open on several decades of literary and political history of Quebec.
Christian Desmeules
A lake in the morning, Louis Hamelin (Boréal)
Three years later Twilight of the Yellowstonein which he was interested in the naturalist Jean-Jacques Audubon and his French-Canadian guide, Louis Hamelin this time brings to life the author of Walden or life in the woods, the American poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). In A lake in the morningthe author of The lynx constellationin full possession of his means, once again puts himself on stage thanks to back and forths between biographical fiction and fragments of his own life.
Christian Desmeules
Fortresses and other refuges, Rafaële Germain (Quebec America)
“Can we do without a souvenir? Inherit a memory? » In this beautiful story built around three memories, Rafaële Germain, daughter of Georges-Hébert Germain and Francine Chaloult, who have “taken an inordinate place” in her life for too long, explores the “inner disintegration” of her mother, affected of Alzheimer’s disease, and revisits his own childhood. A lucid look tinged with love, as well as a sensitive exploration of the “memory of memories”.
Christian Desmeules
The declinists, Alain Roy (Ecosociety)
The writer and director of the magazine Disadvantage Alain Roy writes a relentless and very well-researched essay, dismantling chapter after chapter the anti-immigration speeches of six French-speaking personalities, including the Quebec polemicist Mathieu Bock-Côté, of whom he also paints an unflattering portrait. He also takes the opportunity to bring to light the true deadly intentions of the proponents of the “great replacement”, a conspiracy and neofascist theory professed in 2010 by the far-right political activist Renaud Camus.
Ismaël Houdassine
A civilization of fire, Dalie Giroux (Inkwell Memory)
Believing that “our way of living is an explicit organization of self-destruction”, Dalie Giroux, who teaches political and feminist theories at the University of Ottawa, examines pandemic conspiracyism and “fossil fascism”, identity tensions and polarizing discourses. A pamphlet ordered by urgency, in which the essayist underlines in broad strokes, in a tone that is both personal and in the light of decolonial thought, our contradictions and our voluntary blindness.
Christian Desmeules