Hekla and Laki, Marine Schneider (Albin Michel Jeunesse)
Hekla and Laki, it is the story of a luminous encounter between a child as bubbly as the center of the Earth and an old man. It is on the volcanic lands of Iceland, in a cold and poetic setting, that the duo gets to know each other. Then, Laki’s death leaves the child, a little incandescent ball, to continue on his journey, full of hope, courage and the memory of his friend. This text by Marine Schneider is carried by illustrations in contrasting colors in which the warmth of the bond and transmission come together in what offers itself as an ode to the beauty of the world.
Marie Fradette
The Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (Viola)
The author of Station Eleven is back with a novel shorter in number of pages, but long in scope. A novel both vast and intimate from which we emerge haunted by the themes and amazed by the very mastered non-linear construction. Four eras set between 1512 and 2401, a recurring event like a fracture in reality: a journey through time with an existential flavor where life, death, love, the arts, the wanderings of hearts and people intertwine , move and dazzle.
Sonia Sarfati
The Silence, Dennis Lehane (Gallmeister)
Boston, 1974: life is hard in the working-class neighborhood of Southie. Especially since the city has been shaken by a series of riots linked to the anti-discriminatory practice of “ busing » ordered by a federal judge. It is in this turbulent context that the daughter of Mary Pat Fennessy disappears, a character worthy of the great Greek tragedies who will do anything to find her. A masterful piece of writing telling how the hate factory that America has become is set up and operated.
Michel Bélair
The castaways of the Wager, David Grann (Éditions du sous-sol)
In this epic literary report, David Grann recounts the sinking of the British frigate HMS Wager in Patagonia, and the nightmare experienced by the survivors. With his detailed and terrifying descriptions, the journalist from New Yorker immerses the reader in the intensity of despair and makes them experience the swell, the itching, the smells, the disgust and the promiscuity, in addition to engaging in reflection on the systems that structure our history and our relationship to the world.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Trust, Hernan Diaz (Éditions de l’Olivier)
Is money a fiction? This is the question at the heart of Trust — Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — which examines, in the form of four different manuscripts, the fate of a couple of entrepreneurs who made their fortune during the Great Depression. Hernan Diaz skillfully handles this almost Borgesian interweaving of stories to compose a surprising story where each twist of the situation informs both the characters themselves and the lies they tell themselves to justify their actions and their status. Bright.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Voice / Lightning / Thunder, Myriam JA Chancy (Editions du stir-ménage)
In this dense and poignant polyphonic odyssey, Myriam JA Chancy returns to the earthquake of January 12, 2010, in Haiti, and recounts, from ten very distinct voices, the mourning, the hope, the lack and the misery that resulted this tragic event in its wake. By looking at the before and after, the writer bears witness to a forever fragmented time and dissects the fractures which, within Haitian society, could have exacerbated the consequences. A complex novel that resonates like a cry from the heart.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Let’s not be afraid of the sky, Emma Hooper (Alto)
They were new. Nine twins who grew up together in their mother’s womb. Today, there are only five left. Five strong women, eager for freedom, who fight against the frameworks in which men wish to restrict them. In her third novel, Emma Hooper takes a detour through Antiquity to address contemporary feminist issues. From testimonies from the sisters, the Canadian writer weaves a perilous destiny tinged with mysticism that keeps you in suspense until the last page. Bewitching.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec
Time is a mother, Ocean Vuong (Gallimard)
The long poems of Time is a motherin free verse or in discontinuous prose made up of pieces of cut sentences, often find their perfect voice: “ [il] write[t] the poem / but the birds are / only holes in the sky”. There are many such dazzlements: “ […] I took handfuls / of ashes, black as ink / […] to shelter / the sweet curse of dreams”, “because the wing of the butterfly / which trembled in the black mud / was a word / abandoned in its language”. The poet’s desire is luminously clear: “It ends tonight! I shouted to the cop who stopped us for dreaming. » Let us dream with poetry in our hearts.
Hugues Corriveau
Esther’s notebooks. Stories from my 17th birthday, Riad Sattouf (Allary Éditions)
Since she was nine years old, Esther has been telling her life story to author Riad Sattouf (The Arabic of the future), a friend of his father. The ups and downs of his daily life, his happiness, his misfortunes, his questions, school, friends, everything (or almost) goes through it. And as the author has this immense talent, that of telling childhood and adolescence by touching on their truth, this results in a series of albums, including this most recent, entirely authentic and funny.
François Lemay
Kafka, the time of decisions, volume 1, Reiner Stach (He seeks noon)
With this kick-off to a monumental biography (three volumes of 900 pages each) of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the German Reiner Stach recounts in a fascinating way this too brief and “uneventful” life. Rigorous, lively and erudite, fascinating without ever romanticizing (“nothing is invented”), Reiner Stach makes the German-speaking Czech writer a real novel character before our eyes. A monument which seems to echo the inner density of the author of Metamorphosis.
Christian Desmeules
Sad Tiger, Snow Sinno (POL)
Diving into the heart of his “sordid personal history”, Neige Sinno evokes in sad tiger the repeated sexual violence suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather. This searching novel, a testimony as much as a quest for truth, a hybrid between the story and the essay which won it the Femina prize, is intended to be an intelligent and calm exploration of evil (“the secret center of our world”) where the author calls on other books and other victims who have written on the subject. Unavoidable.
Christian Desmeules
Sarah, Susanne and the writer, Éric Reinhardt (Gallimard)
A bit like in Love and forests (Gallimard, 2014), the narrator of 7e novel by Éric Reinhardt dialogues with a woman who entrusted him with her personal story so that he could turn it into a novel. A woman this time “punished” for having wanted to impose shock therapy on her relationship. A trompe-l’oeil dive into marital hell and a world of psychological violence, but also a sensitive reflection on the links that can exist between readers and writers, real beings and paper characters.
Christian Desmeules
Proust, family novel, Laure Murat (Robert Laffont)
With Proust, family novelessayist Laure Murat takes head-on the aristocratic world of her childhood, which for a long time had only a degree of separation for her from the society described by Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time. A “realm of the pure signifier and performance without an object” where, she says, a climate of permanent confusion between literature and life seemed to reign permanently. An extraordinary autobiographical story, dense and very flexible.
Christian Desmeules
The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis (Robert Laffont)
Treat yourself to a journey through dark and paranoid time with this new title from Bret Easton Ellis. Thirteen years later Imperial suite(s)the American makes a fascinating and unexpected return to fiction, featuring, as in Less than zero (1986), the golden youth of Los Angeles in the 1980s to which he belonged. Twisted and dark coming-of-age novel full of musical references, Splinters is a long autofictional drift that skillfully mixes truth and falsehood.
Christian Desmeules
Twilight, Philippe Claudel (Stock)
In this immense social novel that resembles a thriller, Philippe Claudel imagines the consequences of the assassination of a priest in a Balkan province where Christians and Muslims live together. Following this event, tempers flared, ordering a series of criminal acts and cruelties between neighbors. Through the clumsy investigation of a police officer, the writer begins a complex reflection on indifference, conventions and the fragility of truth, demonstrating how a bygone era persists in today’s thought patterns. Masterful.
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec