Booksellers advise: February 2023
Initiative Booksellers recommend responds to the request of readers eager for suggestions. Every month, a commission made up of fifteen booksellers, after many passionate and fascinating discussions, determines a selection of five books. Essays, comics, novels for children or for adults, from here and elsewhere, these five books are sold in bookstores that are members of our network. This initiative is an excellent opportunity to promote books that are considered particularly valuable, as well as to emphasize the essential role of your bookseller. Here are the picks for February.
Sometimes lakes burn
Geneviève Bigué (cold front)
You know: sometimes lakes burn. It even seems that if you dip something in it, it comes out all golden! Is it a legend? It’s true? One thing is certain, Lake Kijikone in Rivière-aux-Corbeaux is on fire and this prompts our protagonists to want to check the scale of the legend. Geneviève Bigué’s surprising and well-crafted story. The illustrations are beautiful and well paced. But is the legend true? You just have to look…
Shannon DesbiensLes Bouquinistes bookstore (Chicoutimi)
red lily of the valley
Christian Bobin (Gallimard)
Bobin went into the blissful immanence that he was so good at revealing to us, pulling the boring veil of reality over the beauty of small poetic things hidden behind the scenes. As a will, there is no last will torn out in the last death throes, no column of figures to accompany the new bank fences. True to himself, the giant Bobin leaves us a few words in his Sunday bestseller to confront the vanity of modernity, its hordes of sleepiness marching who knows where. We discover, in addition to his eternal cheerfulness, his capacity for an Olympic miracle, the more combative Bobin, who momentarily sharpens the feathers of his soft dreamy wings to kill ambient mediocrity with a few mocking barbs. Then he precisely reminds us that regardless of the scale of the crime, its reference time, it is always a question of finding in everything the bright color of the red lily of the valley.
Thomas Dupont-BuistGallimard bookstore (Montreal)
It’s going to be hot tonight
Yannick Marcoux (XYZ)
Literature with a sexual connotation is often riddled with exaggerations and implausibilities, generally favoring exaggeration at the expense of realism or authenticity whose minutiae may be too easily judged inappropriate to arouse excitement. In this collection, on the contrary, giving pride to the natural, from the wonder of intimacy to the very relative banality of desire, from the sensual complicity of the promises we make to the unpredictability of keeping them, from the rare alignment of a star to what it takes from good will to stay the course despite whims or the nostalgia of more spontaneous times to the calm evocation of the calmer waters of the present, Yannick Marcoux advocates a life of the senses whose liveliness is combined with the syncopated rhythm of everyday life in which, as long as love is involved, hearts still beat harmoniously.
Philippe FortinMarie-Laura (Jonquière) bookstore
what i know about you
Eric Chacour (viola)
Éric Chacour writes an exceptional debut that immerses us in a conservative family in Cairo in 1960. Tarek, whom the narrator talks to, becomes a doctor following his father. This imposed profession is responsible for the disintegration of his family after an encounter that will disrupt the established order and push him into exile in Montreal. Complex characters, descriptions appealing to our senses, pain and sweetness, all of this is summed up in Chacour’s text, which established authors have nothing to envy.
Pascale Brisson-LessardMarie-Laura (Jonquière) bookstore
Funny
Clementine Beauvais (gun)
It’s almost impossible to summarize Funny without disclosure. The author took a risky gamble by writing this wacky story and she accepted the challenge brilliantly. WITH Funny, Clémentine Beauvais – the author – becomes Clémentine Beauvais – the heroine of her own story. She embarks on a quest that mixes reality and fiction to discover what caused the disappearance of the good fairy godmothers (because they already existed in history). If the novel is difficult to summarize, it is very easy to read thanks to the witty, light and refreshing style. Although the novel has a good dose of fantasy, it deals with several themes that are in line with the times: social classes, the place of women in society or even transidentity. Give to all lovers of history, absurdity or fantasy!
hyacinth ridgeMonet bookstore (Montreal)
