A lake in the morning
Louis Hamelin
After Jean-Jacques Audubon in Twilight of the Yellowstone (Boreal, 2020), Louis Hamelintakes a new interest in a tutelary figure of the environmental movement, Henry David Thoreau. Mythical figure of contemporary thought, father of voluntary simplicity, the American naturalist comes to life in all his complexity under the virtuoso pen of the novelist. By examining the links that unite him with his loved ones, A lake in the morning skillfully interweaves history and fable to explore the contradictions of a man eager for freedom, but influenced by the puritanism of his time.
Boréal, October 3
Trouble the waters
Frédérick Lavoie
In 2017, Frédérick Lavoie travels to Bangladesh to produce a series of reports on water issues. While he collects testimonies, he cannot help but question the limits and pitfalls of field journalism. “Story of a collision with opacity”, Trouble the waters reports the vertigo, the doubts and the flashes of light of a journalist who abandons his certainties to enter directly into the insoluble, and thus get closer to the truth which his pen will inherit. The author pursues here an essential reflection on the limits of expression and the establishment of power relations. Taking.
La Peuplade, September 27
Lourdes
Catherine Lemieux
A student at the University of T… in Europe, Lourdes is delighted to have been able to find a pass — as a buffet attendant — for the Neo-Me Feminizing Laboratory Symposium. The conference, which focuses on “the feminine strength” of the Russian poet Razuvaeva, aims to analyze and extract the matrix power of her writings. Skillfully executed satire, Lourdes dissects with humor and insight the discursive forces and other AI which dictate beliefs, restrict intuitions and control fields of knowledge. Catherine Lemieux offers a falsely cynical reflection on the traps in which we voluntarily trap ourselves and an original and striking plea for freedom of thought.
Boréal, September 19
Solène in three acts
Alain Beaulieu
Choral format in The interrogation by Salim Belfakir (Druide, 2016), shot-reverse shot effects in The postman Passila (Druid, 2010), Alan Beaulieu is a master of structures. He proves it once again with Solène in three acts, which takes the form of “a temporal triptych resembling a kaleidoscope”. Through three significant periods in the narrator’s life – adolescence, quarantine and illness – the writer questions the tortuous paths of chance in the heart of a Quebec in profound change.
Druid, October 18
It could have been a movie
Martine Delvaux
It was during research for a film script that Martine Delvauxmet Hollis Jeffcoat. This American painter, known for having contributed to the end of the legendary union between Jean Paul Riopelle and Joan Mitchell, was also a great artist, a passionate person, a lover. The author of White outside (Héliotrope, 2015) analyzed paintings, newspaper articles, interviews and photographs to put together the fragments of the story, and imagine his version of Hollis Jeffcoat. It could have been a movie embroiders an original and captivating portrait, which does justice to those who create in the shadows.
Heliotrope, September 20
Qimmik
Michael Jean
With Kukum (Free expression, 2019), Michael Jean has revived interest in Quebec — and soon the entire world — in the history of Canada’s indigenous peoples. In Qimmik, the Innu author directs his gaze towards the north of the province, between the taiga and the tundra. A lawyer is dispatched to the North Shore to represent an Inuk accused of killing former police officers. Her quest for justice will lead her in the footsteps of a free and united people, and in those of a majestic territory that successive governments have strived to erase, to constrain, to destroy. With a poignant and accessible story like those who made his mark, the author hammers home the truth with openness and kindness, his gaze resolutely turned towards the future of the world.
Free expression, October 18
Havre-Saint-Pierre
Abla Farhoud
Final novel of the late Abla Farhoud, Havre-Saint-Pierre is a convincing example of the immense heritage that is the literary and dramaturgical work of the Quebec writer of Lebanese origin. Through the characters of two brothers, and their deceased sister, at whose grave they want to go to pay their respects, which is why they cross Quebec by car, the novelist establishes a dialogue on the multiple paths of exile, of rootedness and intimacy. She offers a final bittersweet book, where her melancholy humor, her great humanity and her insatiable curiosity shine through.
VLB publisher, September 27
A stormy night
Yves Beauchemin
A true monument of Quebec literature, Yves Beauchemin is, with his Juliette Pomerleau, one of the five Quebecers to have reached the prestigious list of nominees for the Goncourt Prize. At 82 years old, he will soon unveil his twelfth novel, A stormy night. On a winter evening such as only exists in Quebec, an emergency doctor comes to the aid of an injured young man. The doctor, stunned, thinks he recognizes in this patient the features of his long-deceased brother. What follows is an incredible adventure testifying to the insatiable creative energy of its author.
Quebec America, September 26
Kanatuut
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine was inspired by the way of telling and thinking about the world of her ancestors to compose the short stories of Kanatuut, a collection on the cusp of myth and tale. Merging certain elements of Innu founding stories with apparitions taken from her own dreams, she challenges the boundaries of the imagination and relates the reappropriation of self, territory and culture through its reinvention and rebirth.
Stanké, 1er november
Mount Mirador
Myriam Beaudoin
What will be left of us when the planet has reached the limit of its resources? Hope, according to Myriam Beaudoin. In Mount Mirador, a dystopian and allegorical novel, the author sets her thoughts in a village swept away by a tsunami of mud. A woman and a disabled child find refuge in a hillside that is home to a suspicious and misanthropic survivalist. Dreaming of righting wrongs, the strange trinity invents the rebirth of a world left on the edge of the abyss.
Leméac, October 4