Our reviews offer you the list of their must-haves. An overview of Hugues Corriveau, Manon Dumais, Marie Fradette, Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, François Lemay, Yannick Marcoux, Louise-Maude Rioux Soucy and Sonia Sarfati.
May our joy remain by Kevin Lambert (Heliotrope)
The author of Roberval Quarrel invites himself into the homes of the ultra-rich with this brilliant novel at the center of which shines an internationally renowned Montreal architect, Céline Wachowski. Around her is a fascinating fauna, from left and right, which says a lot about the time, its struggles and its tensions. Very accomplished, the literary edifice designed by Kevin Lambert is intellectually brilliant, forcing us to reflect on the privileges of some and the struggles of others.
Louise-Maude Rioux Soucy
Sailors can’t swim by Dominique Scali (La Peuplade)
With this maritime utopia with the outlines of an adventure novel, Dominique Scali transports us to the island of Ys, capital of a people obsessed with honor and courage. Steeped in contradictions, human to the core, its heroine, Danae Berrubé-Portanguen, known as Poussin, is up to par. Subjected to the winds of an XVIIIe alternate century, this irresistible fable pitches and rolls sometimes towards justice, sometimes towards injustice, without ever losing its bearings. A narrative tour de force.
Louise-Maude Rioux Soucy
The girl with the braid by Françoise de Luca (leaf merchant)
Inspired by a true story, this novel recounts the great friendship between a Frenchwoman from an unstimulating background and a Polish Jewess who puts her in contact with her loving and cultured family. When war broke out, one joined the Resistance through an unknown path: fashion. The author sketches authentic and irresistible characters, early feminists, from whom we cannot take our eyes off. An ode to the power of sisterhood and the beauty of painful memory.
Anne-Frederique Hébert-Dolbec
The white shadows by Dominique Fortier (Viola)
Unlikely continuation of paper towns (2018), The white shadows invokes the memory of Emily Dickinson and the void left by the poet after her death. The family searches the writings of the disappeared as a way of escaping the absence. Thus, in this delicate, deep and luminous prose, Dominique Fortier explores the fragility, the evanescence of the elements, the transience of time. Through literature, she manages to remedy death in a certain way and ensures the possible durability of things.
Marie Fradette
people of the north by Perrine Leblanc (Gallimard)
At the height of her art, Perrine Leblanc has done remarkable fieldwork for this third novel, enhanced by the cultural and narrative fertility of the territory. With the conflict in Northern Ireland as a backdrop, she weaves an exciting spy story, a love story of harrowing truth, on the chessboard of war. Her pen, precise, sober, erudite, finds in the scars of history the breath of an intimate and grandiose fiction whose complexity she embraces head-on.
Anne-Frederique Hébert-Dolbec
fancy molasses by Francis Ouellette (La Mèche)
In this vibrant and fascinating fresco, populated by characters made from the stuff of legends, Francis Ouellette surveys the recesses of his memory to bring the Faubourg à m’lasse to life, this working-class neighborhood of Montreal that has disappeared today. In a mixed and earthy language, the novelist recounts the negligence, violence and injustices of a childhood nevertheless rocked by the magic and tenderness of the imagination. A deeply lucid tale, powerful as the spark of a revolt.
Anne-Frederique Hébert-Dolbec
radio garden by Charlotte Biron (Le Quartanier “QR Series”)
radio garden, is the story of a voice threatened with extinction because of a tumor in the jaw where Charlotte Biron describes the pain, the fear, the isolation experienced daily with accuracy and lucidity: “I would like a text which does not say anything intelligent, which testifies to an experience outside the world, violent, boring, invisible. Sensitive to sounds, she reveals with her pen of surgical precision the importance of the choice of words in this fragmented story at the end of which her voice triumphs.
Manon Dumais
Confessions of a Normal Woman by Eloise Marseille (Pow Pow)
We were pleasantly surprised by the maturity that emanated from this first album by young author Éloïse Marseille, released last spring. A recent re-reading confirmed this impression. This lucid talk about accepting one’s sexuality and one’s body, about this introspective attempt to understand oneself, done with humor and self-mockery, remains striking and totally entertaining, and should be put in the hands of all and of all.
Francois Lemay
When will the dawn come by Dominique Fortier (Viola)
Dominique Fortier engages in a moving and nuanced reflection on mourning, creation and the power of nature over the artist. Calling on the voices of Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner and Pierre Ronsard, the work evokes those of Virginia Woolf and Emily Brontë so much the echo of the waves, the howling of the wind and the stormy nights haunting and enveloping. Object of beauty of a refined writing, When will the dawn come turns out to be a delicate complement to white shadows (Viola, 2022).
Manon Dumais
nail polish by Nicole Brossard and Symon Henry (Le Noroît)
Nicole Brossard has just received the Corbeil prize, endowed with a $100,000 scholarship. Deserved reward, especially since she gave us this very beautiful collection. “The enigma of the poem / a successful form of embrace”, she tells us. Symon Henry’s chromatic scores accompany the vibration specific to the poems. This collection only accentuates the stimulating relevance of Nicole Brossard who pursues, in the modernity of her language, the underlying traces of our essential presence in the world.
Hugues Corriveau
At home by Myriam Vincent (Bush poets)
Jessica, a young pregnant woman, has just moved in with her lover in a recently acquired house. At the gates of an expected happiness, however, everything is about to go off the rails. Recluse in this isolated house, her well-being relegated to the background by that of her fetus, she fights against the dictates of motherhood. With this subversive and original second novel, held on the thread of a devouring tension, Myriam Vincent develops, with rare skill, a society yet to be born.
Yannick Marcoux
Penances by Alex Viens (The August Horse)
A young woman visits her father, a violent punk with whom she has cut ties for 10 years, to give him a mysterious box. Between these two flayed alive, a dialogue of glaring realism and striking cruelty ensues during which they rehash painful family memories, until the supper, heavily washed down, falls into horror. With this first novel, behind closed doors anxiety that takes the guts, Alex Viens makes a powerful entry on the literary scene.
Manon Dumais
prey by Andrée A. Michaud (Quebec America)
Learning stories are often auspicious. Trials, yes. But on arrival, the light. Andrée A. Michaud does not play in these waters. So the three protagonists of prey no more. Three friends, three teenagers, a weekend of late summer and freedom in nature. In the shadows, a man. A camera in the open air, a powerful drama whose rhythm relaxes or accelerates as needed. Emotion in flower of words. And everywhere the beauty of a certain darkness.
Sonia Sarfati
Once upon a time there was a word by Nicolas Lauzon and Marijo Denis (Editions du Passage)
For Nicolas Lauzon and Marijo Denis, poet and linguist behind the creation of‘Once upon a time there was a word, words are tireless workers in the shadows, and the evolution of their meaning, over time, creates so many captivating stories. This book offers us the story of twenty-five words, unveiled in the freedom of the poem, then brought to light by a linguistic explanation. Carried by a colorful language and a resolutely playful tone, the proposal is educational and fascinating.
Yannick Marcoux
Cinema in Quebec. What our films say about us by Michel Coulombe (Guy Saint-Jean editor)
For this accessible, admirable and abundantly illustrated panorama of our cinema, the author of Dictionary of Quebec cinema and emeritus critic of Radio-Canada has reviewed nearly 600 films from here, from 1943 to 2022, in order to reveal what they tell us about us. From turnips to masterpieces, from blockbusters in auteur films, the columnist has listed more than a hundred recurring themes, from the lightest to the most serious social subjects, to the delight of moviegoers. Thank you, Michel Coulombe.
Manon Dumais