Literary Back to School | My Wish List

The undeniable success of the “August 12, I Buy a Quebec Book” day has been shaking up the literary back-to-school calendar for several years. As you read these lines, some of the most anticipated books of the fall are already in bookstores and La Presse has told you about them: Amiante by Sébastien Dulude, La part de l’océan by Dominique Fortier, Petite-Ville by Melikah Abdelmoumen… But this season, which is off to a flying start, is far from over and still has many expectations and surprises in store for us. Here are ten titles that I can’t wait to discover.

On the “anti-wokes”

Several books on the “woke” threat have been published in recent years, but how do the “anti-wokes” think? What do they defend? Philosopher Learry Gagné, a specialist in the epistemology of social sciences, examines this thorny subject, which arouses many passions, with humor, by analyzing the public speeches of intellectuals, to deepen the reflection on freedom of expression and academic freedom.

Book release: September 16

Of signs and pandemic

Everything is originalRobert-Cliche prize in 2021, first novel by a outsider of the literary world, Paul Serge Forest, surprised everyone. Wear the mask should fascinate just as much, because its author, who is a doctor in real life, draws on his experience in a hospital hotel during the pandemic to go into a completely different world: the virus discussed in this novel makes patients lose the punctuation of their sentences, while a black market for punctuation marks develops in parallel – since there are always profiteers in misfortune. The publishing house mentions Hubert Aquin, Gaétan Soucy and the show Black Series as a writing kinship, which only arouses curiosity.

Book release: September 25

Consent, Blanchette version

Josée Blanchette, essential columnist at Duty for 40 years, has sometimes mentioned this relationship she had at 15 with a teacher 30 years her senior, notably in the wake of #metoo and books Consent by Vanessa Springora or sad tiger by Neige Sinno. With the style we know, Josée Blanchette returns to Almost virgin about this period of her life, while depicting the customs of the 1970s in Quebec, and what she believed at the time to be a great love story that was in fact a matter of predation.

Book release: September 25

Lambertian Praise of Imagination

Once again, Kevin Lambert goes off the beaten track and stands where you don’t expect him, even changing his first name: Snow trailssigned by Kev Lambert, is completely different from his previous novel, May our joy remainwhich has won numerous awards, including the Médicis. In this 400-page tome that is intended to be a page-turner, filled with nods to Stephen King, Nintendo games, Harry Potter and Michel Garneau, the chapters are short and Quebec orality reigns supreme. We follow the adventures of two children during the Christmas holidays, who must fight occult forces and help a creature named Skyd in a parallel world, while avoiding at all costs that adults, busy with their holiday parties, get involved.

Book release: October 4

Medical assistance in dying in Laberge’s eye

Marie Laberge, one of Quebec’s most popular writers, tackles the subject of medical assistance in dying in a novelistic way, told here by a woman, ten days before her final appointment. Faced with this programmed death, whether those around her approve or not, it is time for assessments and lucidity, but also, paradoxically, more than ever, for life.

Book release: October 8

American “Road Trip” with Mavrikakis

This book arrived at the last minute in the back-to-school season of the Héliotrope publishing house and will be released just in time for the American elections. The writer Catherine Mavrikakis made this summer a road trip in the United States, a country that has long been at the heart of her works. Following in the footsteps of these writers of the road (London, Kerouac, McCarthy, Steinbeck, etc.), the author recounts, it seems, a journey of a disturbing strangeness. Not only is it a good thing, but I really like it when Mavrikakis ventures into the literary essay.

Book release: October 16

Saint-Exupéry in Quebec

Philippe Girard’s new album at La Pastèque tells the story of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his wife Consuelo’s stay in Quebec in 1942. The aviator is demobilized and a little depressed, but it is in this strange context that he will meet “a little girl who draws sheep, a lamplighter, and a little boy with a clear gaze who asks a lot of questions”… In short, the cartoonist imagines a sort of genesis for what will become The little prince.

Book release: October 24

Discover Tony Roman

This is not a vulgar plug between colleagues. I have been waiting for this book for at least 15 years, just as Jean-Christophe Laurence has been waiting for the next Pagliaro album for too long. He has been working on this biography of Tony Roman for years. It is not that I am particularly an admirer of Tony Roman, but under the pen of Jean-Christophe Laurence, everything is surprising and we should learn many interesting details about the career of this artist. The publishing house presents this book as an example of “gonzo” journalism!

Book release: October 16

Queen Janette’s Double Jubilee

The title of this book reminds me of Celine Dion singing The hymn to love of Edith Piaf at the Paris Olympics. Janette Bertrand will soon be 100 years old, she is still here, and it is extraordinary. She magnificently adorned the cover of She Quebecshared widely on social networks, and a new literary prize bears his name. One hundred years of love – because it is love that she has professed all her life – would be the fourth act of her autobiography My life in three actswhere she delivers her thoughts on old age and her criticisms of ageism, her new hobbyhorse among many others.

Book release: October 23

Finally Ferris’s second book

Emil Ferris is not a Quebec comic book artist, but it was a local publishing house, Alto, that had the flair to publish her in French in Quebec. This Chicago-born artist created a huge surprise in 2017 with My Favorite Things is Monsters (What I like are monsters.). It was a complete unknown who published her first album in her fifties. However, this magnificent unclassifiable work, rejected countless times by publishing houses, was considered an instant masterpiece. Art Spiegelman even claimed that Emil Ferris was “one of the greatest comic strip artists of our time”. The sequel to this graphic novel is immensely anticipated and I’m going to rush to read it.

Book release: November 26