Us, the othersToula Drimonis
Us, the others
All in all
272 pages
Daughter of Greek immigrants, Toula Drimonis deeply loves Quebec, and it is precisely because she loves it so much that she makes it her duty to criticize it. In the translation signed by Mélissa Verreault of this essay published last year, the journalist interweaves family story and research work in order to question the identity policies of the province, including “those which divide, such as law 21, and nationalist movements leading to their establishment. Xenophobia, immigration, fear of others, issues of belonging: so many not at all flammable subjects with which the columnist juggles. No doubt, it will cause a lot of talk.
January 30
This desire points meClaire Legendre
This desire points me
Leméac
144 pages
Desire as such is nothing exceptional, sings Dumas on his album The course of the days, a statement with which Claire Legendre would undoubtedly disagree. The novelist (Making of, Bermuda) returns to the dizzying tone of his essay The water lily and the spider (2015), in which she took stock of her fears, this time in order to delve into the inexhaustible theme of desire, which she explores with her usual and implacable clairvoyance. “I was an involuntarily single woman from 2010 to 2020,” she wrote. This hadn’t happened to me before. I was not equipped to deal with it. Finding yourself “on the market” is steamroller violence. »
February 7
The joy of thinkingJérémie McEwen
The joy of thinking
Boreal
232 pages
The dialogue with a person we loved does not end when they die, Serge Bouchard’s friends and collaborators know something about it, they who continue to converse and reflect with the woolly mammoth, beyond the curtain shadows. This is the case of Jérémie McEwen who, in The joy of thinkingraps the chronicles that he presented on the microphone of the show It’s crazy from 2017 to 2021. “All true thought must be carried through speaking, ideally in public,” believes the philosopher who, in three unpublished texts, will pay tribute to the irreplaceable anthropologist, whose influence on the life of ideas in Quebec is still as vibrant as ever.
March 19
Treat medicineJean Désy
Treat medicine
X Y Z
140 pages
Jean Désy wishes to “bring humans back to the heart of health”, as the subtitle of this essay suggests, constructed from stories recorded in his notebooks during his visits to the Far North of Quebec, where he works as a emergency doctor. For the professor and poet, it is more than urgent that medicine relearns how to care for the souls of patients, and not just their bodies. “Taking the time to listen to the patient, taking their hand, looking them in the eyes, talking with them are some of the essential actions to take,” believes the man for whom medicine must be a science of the heart .
April 11
Vagrant certaintiesValérie Chevalier
Vagrant certainties
Hurtubise
260 pages
The love that makes you dizzy, the love that hurts, the love that anchors you. Valérie Chevalier (The fitted sheet theory, The din of possibilities) has written extensively about love in all its forms between the pages of his six popular novels, in which a magical conception of the couple often clashes with the implacability of a reality having nothing to do with Disney. The host and author, however, will never have approached the subject from such a personal angle as in Vagrant certainties, a hybrid book, between fiction and essay, guided by a big question: “Between the incessant quest for Great Love and the sweet stability of life as a couple, where is the recipe for happiness? »
April 11