With his new book, Jean-Simon DesRochers invites us to a literary treasure hunt that has its qualities, but which ends up losing even the most willing of readers along the way.
In The mirror maskthe narrator, Rémi Roche, more than the author’s alter ego, returns to the place where he wrote his first novel 25 years ago: a building which had become the setting, named Le Galant, as in The heatwave of the poorDesRochers’ first and brilliant novel published in 2009.
The first part of the novel, effervescent, is thus devoted to the Montreal bohemian scene of the early 2000s, told in the raw manner that made its reputation and remains its strength. Then, as in the multiverse, the past ends up joining the present, and fiction, reality (or is it the other way around?). The characters in Rémi/Jean-Simon’s novels multiply in parallel realities, and even the real editor of Herbes rouges where DesRochers made his debut, François Hébert, who died three years ago, appears in the different levels of the story.
Through this festival of self-references, AI invites itself. But with all these characters who split or disappear, and these superimposed mise en abymes, we mostly have the impression of coming across a session of ChatGPT on acid, and the result is as complex as it is dry. We understand Jean-Simon DesRochers wanting to explore new avenues. But we must not forget the readers behind it.
The mirror mask
Boreal
336 pages