Literary return | Ten great promises from Quebec

According to data from the Bank of French-Language Titles (BTLF), sales of Quebec books jumped 18.3% between 2020 and 2021, proof that Quebec’s surge of love for its literature, that the observed since the beginning of the pandemic, cannot be slowed down by any new wave. Here are 10 titles that, on paper, have everything it takes to fuel that love.

The bird game, by Sylvie Drapeau

With four novels on the counter (his tetralogy River, which she began in 2015 and concluded in 2019), Sylvie Drapeau is no longer an “actress-who-writes”, but a writer in her own right (a writer who also happens to be one of our most formidable actresses). With this language that knows how to say poetically what the ties uniting a family are inextricable and sometimes painful, she continues in this fifth book to examine the lines of force and fractures of a clan, more precisely of a couple. of twins, that of Claire and Raymond, the birds of the title. An “ode to the survival instinct” and “to the strength of maternal love”, we promise.

Leméac, 120 pages, January 26

Impromptu, by Catherine Mavrikakis

It is a small book, but not a small work. In barely 72 pages, Catherine Mavrikakis (Bay City sky, The absent of all bouquets) depicts, with this alloy of tenderness and sarcasm of which she knows the perfect balance, the small Montreal university milieu of the 1980s, when a certain idea of ​​what she calls “the great European culture” still weighs like a screed of lead on the intellectual life of Quebec. It also describes with precision all the complexity of a relationship, as noble as it is absurd, between a student and her master, the hilarious Karlheinz Mueller-Stahl, whose extravagances may remind you of those of some of your old teachers.

Heliotrope, 72 pages, February 2

The cigar at the edge of the lips, by Akim Gagnon

It’s stronger than us: the Sunday writers and other magnificent losers of the literary adventure, we love them. Bottle of wine, cigar, broken heart? “A real cliche”, ironically the press release accompanying this first novel by Akim Gagnon. The opening pages of this “watered autobiography of a perfect stranger” nevertheless reveal an unparalleled language, as well as a universe reminiscent The conspiracy of fools. No wonder for those who know the mark of music video director of the one who put his grotesque and marvelous imagination, somewhere between André Forcier and Harmony Korine, at the service of Antoine Corriveau, Émile Bilodeau and Klô Pelgag. We’ll talk about it soon.

La Mèche, 344 pages, February 16

domestic acrobatics, by Geneviève Drolet

With Chronic sex (2011), her first novel, Geneviève Drolet testified to the intensity animating circus artists, under the big top as under the sheets (or everywhere around). Four books later, the professional tightrope walker is measured against another form of intensity, that of parenthood, in Domestic acrobatics – a title in which all those who have just survived a week of school at home will certainly recognize themselves. The writer examines the impact of the arrival of children on the body, the career and the couple, at the heart of “a society skilful in giving itself a good conscience in terms of supporting families”. Does that remind you of something ?

XYZ, 216 pages, February 16

Novice, by Stéphane Dompierre

Would you know how to spend a day without social networks, without a search engine and without a tablet on which to read your favorite daily newspaper? It is to this ordeal that the cruel Stéphane Dompierre subjects 11 characters addicted to technology, by sending them to detoxify the coco in a week-long unplugging camp. The author ofOne small step for man “diverts the codes of horror cinema”, specifies the press release that we are currently consulting on our smartphone, but also gives pride of place to satire in this 12^and novel, his first since… 2015! Should we conclude that the writer also wastes too much time on the web?

Quebec America, 296 pages, 1^er March

The white shadows, by Dominique Fortier

By winning a Renaudot prize in November 2020 for paper towns, Dominique Fortier won dozens and dozens of new readers, but also continued to spread this dark good news that the work of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) represents. She thus joined a long line of literary friends who had spread the legacy of the American poet across borders – remember that only a dozen of Dickinson’s texts had been published during her lifetime. It is therefore logical that The white shadows are less interested this time in the life of the poet herself than in the abnegation of those who survived her and who allowed her work to know the light of day.

Viola, 248 pages, March 15

people of the north, by Perrine Leblanc

This is without doubt the most awaited literary event of the new school year in Quebec, this return of Perrine Leblanc with a third novel, people of the north. The writer revealed in 2010 by The white man recounts, between Paris, Montreal, Belfast and Dingle, the meeting between a French journalist who “befriends on the ground with men who inform the State and people who campaign for decolonization in Northern Ireland” and a young Quebec journalist , part in the footsteps of the (fictional) writer Samuel Gallagher, he who “swam in the troubled waters of the IRA before being executed by a paramilitary group”. Intriguing.

Gallimard, 192 pages, March 16

Take away the night, by Monique Proulx

There are few joys as great as that of reconnecting with a writer as rare as Monique Proulx, she who, at the rate of a book every six or seven years, will have instilled in her faithful readers the virtues of patience. Do you remember the character of Marcus, this young Hasidic Jew who fled his community in What’s left of me, a choral novel at the heart of which shone Montreal in all its colors? The celebrated author of star sex and Montreal aurora continues its fascinated exploration of the setbacks of a plural metropolis with Take away the night, imagining the amazing friendship between the Marcus in question and a homeless Inuit.

Boreal, 352 pages, March 22

An extraordinary woman, by Catherine Ethier

The title could have perfectly suited her autobiography, but it is indeed her first novel that Catherine Ethier has chosen to style with words An extraordinary woman. The columnist with a richer vocabulary than Jeff Bezos has been talking for a few years now, in an interview, about the construction of a first book, a project that could not be more obvious, as her style is as quickly recognizable as Ginette’s voice. Reno rising among the thin voices of a country church choir. It tells the story of a woman in her thirties “who apparently has everything going for her, but who [dans les] behind the scenes is slowly disintegrating”. Tell you our enthusiasm.

Stanké, 200 pages, March 23

On the road with Bashō, Dany Laferriere

I am a Japanese writer, announced Dany Laferrière in 2008 in a novel whose narrator proclaimed his ambition to one day publish a book borrowing the manner of the Japanese masters. The holder of chair number two at the Académie française keeps his word in On the road with Bashō, illustrated novel espousing the method of the monk-poet of the XVII^and century, great tenor of haiku, the one who once wrote: “From time to time / The clouds rest us / From so much looking at the moon. In these daydreams of a solitary globetrotter, a writer casts his gaze on a “world without pity”. “Fortunately, there is literature, jazz, elegant women, cafes and flowers. ” Indeed.

Boréal, 384 pages, March 29