On the occasion of the day “I buy a Quebec book”, which takes place this Saturday, La Presse has selected three freshly printed books to devour without hesitation.
If you like contemporary poetry in free verse and want to take a breathless astral journey over Montreal, Dolce Saint-Arnold’s collection is for you. Published on August 9 by Editions de la maison en feu, this first effort by the author reveals an irreverent and refreshing “franglaise” pen. Through breakdowns, mechanical breakdowns and detours, a Montreal-Saturn flight emerges rich in reflections on alienation, self-awareness and life in the city.
“Lay on the dust the waste from the construction sites that gentrify you when in real life we never dreamed of all these unwanted revitalizations we loved the old roofs along the sidewalks that changed color at each intersection”
A rich story, complex characters and a perfectly neuralgic writing, this is what makes the strength of this novel by Catherine Harton, published by Marchand de Feuilles on August 7. It is a real inner expedition for the protagonists Marianne and Alice, who each go through the mourning of their sister Nathalie in their own way. The moving story of these three sisters, told in an almost impressionistic way, takes us both to the heart of a support group for people suffering from anxiety and to the handwritten memoirs of a mysterious young woman who lived in the 1940s. .
“In my disastrous childhood discoveries on Egyptian mythology: the heart moves in the body when the being is out of order, when his soul is pulverized. This is what I understand in this group, the soul sometimes pulverizes, as my sister’s body pulverized. »
The second novel by Sarah Desrosiers, who had offered the excellent Good dog in 2018, allows us to discover a new part of her talent. His beautiful death reveals a much more refined writing, on the border of stripping. And it serves the story in question magnificently, the meeting between a little girl and her grandmother, when the latter has just mentioned the idea of having recourse to medical assistance in dying. A fine observation of the bonds that are woven between the members of the same family, which leads us to philosophize on the passage of time, death and memory.
“It’s been a long time since my grandmother made soufflé pancakes for me. She no longer took her walk early in the morning. She no longer played Scrabble. She no longer received the family at Christmas. […] The mourning had already passed without our realizing it. Her, me, everyone. »
