Updated yesterday at 8:00 am.
The Tarantula Nebula, Mélissa Verreault
The Tarantula Nebula
XYZ
400 pages
Do the memories you have of an event sometimes differ radically from those of those around you? In any case, this is what happens to Mélisa (with one s) in The Tarantula Nebula, a new novel by Mélissa (with two s) Verreault, the author of The Anguish of the Red Fish (2014), which has obviously lost none of that chic for fascinating titles. Why does this teenage sweetheart who wanted nothing more to do with her come back and confess his burning passion? Why don't her parents keep the same pictures of her childhood as her? Why are his perceptions so different from those of others? Lots of questions, yes, and the answers will still be a few weeks away.
February 1st
The Miraculous, William S. Messier
The wonder
The Quarter
160 pages
Associated with the return of fantasy literature with a capital “I” to Quebec through defiant characters both ordinary and larger than life, William S. Messier (“Dixie,” “Epic,” “Basketball” and Its Foundations) explores the former Enter the territory of the intimate in this self-narrative entitled The Miraculous. At 15, the man who nicknamed himself Will Bill learned that the slightest unfortunate movement could have severed his spinal cord. Seal! So it is the story of a man “who measures his happiness” and who is now living proof that there are indeed miracles in this world.
5. March
Novel without anything, Antoine Charbonneau-Demers
Novel without anything
VLB editor
392 pages
With Coco, winner of the Robert Cliche Prize for the first novel in 2016, Antoine Charbonneau-Demers revealed the fascinating mix of wry humor and genuine pathos that will permeate the rest of his inimitable work, in which life is often theater and sexuality, an obsession that costs as much as it pays off. Presented as a “turning point” in his journey, Roman Sans Rien brings an absurd fantasy to life thanks to a gallery of characters whose names alone promise a lot, including Lol, the deadly goblin, Paris Dulove, the tortured author Wayne Walters, the not very cheerful motivational speaker, and Zéphyrine Montagne, the anti-theatrical actress from Nice. Don't say anything more, we're already convinced.
March 11
A certain art of living, Dany Laferrière
A certain art of living
Boreal
144 pages
The cover of the new Dany Laferrière shows the Japanese writer lying in a bathtub, fully clothed and wearing red Converse on his feet, with a book in his hand and a glass of wine, tomatoes and bananas around him. A scene that seems to embody the spirit of “A Certain Art of Living,” a “wisdom book” for big children that, under the same title, brings together maxims, reflections, daydreams and other haikus written last summer in a hotel in Borneo became. When strung together, these short texts, according to the academic, “form a naive self-portrait like the children’s drawings that move me so much.”
March 12th
Machines, Lula Carballo
In 2018, Lula Carballo created one of the most memorable debut works of the last 10 years with Creatures of Chance, in which the author's mother played slot machines and her grandmother played roulette. Hailing from Quebec, the Uruguayan ancestry flows from one story to the next in Maquina, a novel set in a casino. Luz is hired to understand from the inside the pathological gambling that is corrupting her family tree and perhaps tame what's bubbling inside her. There she befriends Madame B., who is not a fan of Marjo, the singer she celebrated in her previous book, but of Leonard Cohen.
March 13th
machine
Lemeac
Approximately 152 pages
Civilized, Patrick Senécal
Twelve people agree to be cut off from the world for two weeks to undergo a scientific experiment designed to “study and analyze the behavior of people when they are in a particular group and in a… certain context”. » No, fortunately Patrick Senécal's new novel is not about Big Brother celebrities, but about “a very immersive, very stimulating adventure, but one that requires physical and psychological adaptation to situations that are not always easy.” » Situations , which we promise are as terrifying as they are hilarious. Which, if you think about it, still looks a lot like Celebrity Big Brother.
28th March
Civilized
To read
360 pages
People made of glass, Catherine Leroux
A perfectly understandable, if stupid, human instinct that opposes reality to fiction, the harshness of the world as it unfolds in reality, and the transience of imagination. However, Catherine Leroux's work demonstrates that the questions raised by our present age deserve deeper study, thanks to the means of a literature freed from the strict constraints of realism. People of Glass thus appears to adopt an uchronistic perspective similar to that of his previous book The Future (2020). Set in a Montreal ravaged by a severe housing crisis, this fifth novel follows Sidonie, a journalist who investigates disappearances in homeless camps.
2nd of April
Glass people
Old
Approximately 270 pages
On the Heights of Mount Thoreau, Catherine Mavrikakis
Remove from Catherine Mavrikakis' work any pages that deal directly or indirectly with the vast question of death, and see for yourself how little will remain. The author of “The Sky of Bay City” and “Oscar De Profundis” continues her obsession by accompanying a quartet of nurses, the youngest of whom is suffering from terminal cancer, to a clinic that promises to turn her big farewell into a ” “magnificent moment of creativity”. , Not less. “But can the unpredictable pain at the end of life really be solved through an aesthetic or medical procedure? » asks this book, which highlights our arrogance in the face of our common fate.
3rd of April
On the heights of Mount Thoreau
heliotrope
344 pages
Rue Duplessis, Jean-Philippe Pleau
After releasing his touching and perceptive chronicle collection “In the Time of Pressed Thought” last year, the “Reflecting out Loud” host takes on an even more intimate voice in this story of his Drummondville childhood at the heart of an uneducated family. “Rue Duplessis” is neatly subtitled “My Little Darkness” and explores an exciting subject: the renegades of social class, which has been the subject of several recent notable books (including those by Edouard Louis and Caroline Dawson). “A love letter to his parents,” it says, and an ode to education, thanks to which the trained sociologist was able to break away from his unrelenting fate.
4. April
Rue Duplessis
lux
The unsightly one, Claudia Larochelle
We know Claudia Larochelle as a columnist with enlightened enthusiasm and as the creator of Doudou, a favorite character of the little ones. For her part, the author, who published a memorable short story collection in 2011 called Good Girls Plant Flowers in Spring, remained in the shadows for a long time. It reappears here thanks to Collection III, each of whose titles are based on personal memories. “One of the advantages of getting older,” notes the one who will look back in particular on her arrival in the (not always) wonderful world of the media, “is certainly to cope better with the disillusionment, to no longer wait for flowers or look for them. ” them. ” Way.
May 21st
The ugly
Quebec, America