Our Quebec novels of 2022

A brilliant literary year as the one that is ending. Our journalists had the difficult but stimulating task of selecting the ten titles that marked them.

PlessisJoel Begin

Exactly no one could have predicted that the most imaginative book of 2022 would delve into the circumstances surrounding the death of…Maurice Duplessis! With this first novel, a historical fiction under acid, which speaks perhaps more of the present than one would like to think, Joël Bégin intermingles a thousand tones, without a hitch, and elevates paranoia to the rank of an irresistible game, by combining madness from Thomas Pynchon to the language of Jacques Ferron. Conspiracy theories is one of the worst scourges of our century, except when it is put to the service of literature.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

May our joy remainKevin Lambert

Housing crisis, cancellation culture, privilege gaps. At first glance, Kevin Lambert’s third novel looked like a hot topic bingo card. This was of course underestimating the finesse of the thought of the one who humanizes, without clearing customs, the rich architect Céline Wachowski, of whom he paints a portrait that is both implacable and empathetic. He recalls by the very fact that literature does not have to look for culprits, but that it should not for all that renounce to designate the forces which contribute to the weakening of our solidarities.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

The thread of lifeElsa Pepin

His pen is poetic and evocative, all in finesse. In her second novel, in the running for the College Literary Prize, Elsa Pépin plunges the reader into a “Montréal-Atlantis”, while the island is buried by a rain that never seems to want to stop, and that Iona, the narrator, is also swallowed up by her inner deluge. A very well-crafted story, with its share of suspense, which intimately tackles issues such as climate change, motherhood and artificial paradises.

Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press

An extraordinary womanCatherine Ethier

Anyone who had minimally listened to the chronicles of Catherine Ethier suspected that she had everything of a genuine writer. But at this point? It was impossible to imagine that each of the sentences ofAn extraordinary woman would burst such a firework of pop-poetic arabesques, disarming comic veneer camouflaging a ruthless criticism of the (not so) wonderful world of the media. “Not dying is hard work,” observes the alter ego of the author, a friend of melancholy who, despite her perpetually perky air, has her soul at half mast.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

At homeMyriam Vincent

After having diverted the codes of vengeful fiction in Fury (2020), Myriam Vincent brilliantly appropriates those of the horror novel between the anxiety-provoking pages ofAt home, in which the dream of the perfect little family quickly turns into a nightmare. At the heart of a strange bungalow whose four walls seem invested with a will of their own, a disturbing symbol of suffocating motherhood and conformism as a prison, the good Phil tries to convince his girlfriend Jessica that all this is only the fruit of his tired brain. He obviously should have listened better to his lover.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

Sailors can’t swimDominique Scali

Who said that Quebec literature lacked ambition? In his second book-river, Dominique Scali attaches to the structure of an adventure novel the construction of an insular mythology, perfectly fictitious, but where the differences in privilege very much resemble those which weigh down our time. In her heart: Danaé Poussin, a courageous woman who will in turn suffer and triumph over these forces that we call fatality. And if The little Mermaid had been written in the antediluvian language of the fishermen of For the rest of the world, by a writer with an erudition as vast as the ocean?

Dominic Tardif, The Press

fancy molassesFrancis Ouellette

By delving into his childhood memories of Faubourg à m’lasse and bringing to life some of his famous characters – including the stubborn Frigo, who appears on the cover – Francis Ouellette has written a first novel that is simply stunning, overwhelming itself, carried by an almost epic breath, and a twirling, imaginative, oral language. hard to let go fancy molasses – in the running for the Literary Prize for college students – once you dive into it. My favorite of the year!

Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press

AbovegroundPhilippe Yong

Philippe Yong’s first book apparently speaks of agronomy, but in reality of language. Or, more precisely, of the very possibility of transforming the world, without its efforts being usurped by the self-interested language of communication and technobureaucracy. We will quickly understand that if the plants that its main character grows manage to flourish between heaven and earth – above ground! –, it’s because the writer questions what we sacrifice when we refuse to take root. A novel of lush intelligence.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

suburban gemSara Hebert

The most magnificently shameless autofiction of the year takes on the parodic, paparman-pink allure of one of those feminine guides that claims to offer all the tools to achieve happiness in a few easy steps. Irony ? By drawing on her romantic setbacks and her professional detours, Sara Hébert signs a book that really has the potential to help her readers (and her readers) to live better (or, at least, to feel less alone). A little as if the letter from Louise Deschâtelets in The Journal of Montreal was no longer held by Loulou, but by an affable punk.

Dominic Tardif, The Press

PenancesAlex Viens

This first novel by Alex Viens, which made its way into the preliminary list of the Novel-News-Story category of the Prix des libraires, hits hard and hurts. This camera between a daughter and her father takes you to the guts, auscultates the mechanisms of a broken childhood, relationships of domination and wounds that never heal, questioning in the same breath the possibility of any redemption or forgiveness. . With his writing skillfully oscillating between raw violence and moving fragility, Alex Viens offers an oppressive, harsh, but also cathartic story.

Iris Gagnon-Paradise, The Press