With temperatures plummeting below the nega-teens and the night encroaching at 4 p.m. every day, it’s obviously the most wonderful time of the year… to read.
This is my second winter in Canada. As a Southern Hemisphere baby, I’m used to spending the holiday season playing soccer on the beach, drinking Coronas in shorts, and drying my sweat by lying beached-whale-style on the floor beneath a ceiling fan. To my roaring chagrin, my family (all still living in Southern Africa) are lounging by some body of water or another as I write. Suffice it to say, the winter holidays can be quite daunting and lonely times for me.
But! This is where my superhero, my savior, my one true love, comes in. Because what is more delightful about winter than the perfect excuse to curl up, sit still, and lose yourself in a good book? Winter, to me, is for escaping. And books, for me, can sweep me off my damn feet.
Here’s what I’m reading this winter (all published or written in Quebec), which I’m hoping will lift me out of the fetal position I’ve just assumed on my couch and transport me to worlds beyond my imagination. (I’ve included a couple I’m excited to dive into next year to keep the momentum going through these dark times).
Warning: I have a distinct taste for stories that mix creative ambition with spicy romance. Think artists and writers with obsessive tendencies, mistaking jealousy for love, people for masterpieces, the birth of a masterpiece for an actual baby, and work for meaningful relationships. Essentially, if it involves triangulation and transference, I’m all in. So, if you’re any type of moody, art-loving romantic, this list might be for you.
Kilworthy Tanner by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
Ever since Ronny Litvak-Katzman’s lovely review in the mRb, I’ve been dying to get my hands on a copy of this novel. The protagonist and narrator, Jonno, is a young writer trying to make it big in the Canadian literary scene. When he meets and falls in love with celebrated novelist Kilworthy Tanner (who, shockingly, returns his interest), his love life and creative ambitions become impossibly tangled.
I hear promises of sex, drugs, romance, and a nasty streak of competition and jealousy. It sounds like the characters get up close and personal in almost every way—bodily, emotionally, ambitiously, etc. Power games reign in both the act of writing and the bedroom.
No better cure for loneliness than reading about somebody else’s too-spicy life, I say.
You Crushed It by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard (trans. Neil Smith)
In a similar vein, I’m super excited to read Montreal’s own Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard’s You Crushed It (translated by Neil Smith), which Book*hug Press describes as “a captivating exploration of love and the corroding nature of power in creative industries.” Narrated by Laurie, the girlfriend of Ralf Massi, a rising star in the comedic world, the novel delves into the complex effects that success can have on a relationship. When the couple breaks up, Ralf goes off the deep end, using his comedic clout against his ex in a series of actions that form “a devastating critique of the soft underbelly of toxic masculinity.”
Switching Kilworthy Tanner’s literary setting for a performance one, I’m hoping You Crushed It will provide some much-appreciated comic relief.
Moomin Adventures
Finally, and thanks to a recommendation from Nived Damaraj (the mRb’s last associate editor), I recently devoured a book called Fair Play, by Finnish author Tove Jansson. A semi-autofictional piece about a queer relationship between two artists living on a remote island in an unnamed Scandinavian place, the book was so full of friendship, mundane acts of love, and quirky wit that my eyes tear up now just thinking about it.
Somehow, in my ignorance, I didn’t realize that Jansson (famously) wrote the beloved Moomin series, championed by our very own Drawn and Quarterly since 2007. I’ve never read the Moomin adventures, and in my investigations realized that D&Q will be publishing a new addition to the series, Moomin Adventures: Part Two, next year. This winter I will, therefore, be reading, in preparation, part one of these same adventures. I’m looking forward to the amazing recipe of sweetness and profundity that is so delicately handled in Jansson’s adult fiction. Also, apparently, Jansson based many of the Moomin characters on people in her real life – so I’ll be comparing the two side by side to see what sort of insights (tea) I can glean.
Emma Dollery is a chill guy, pool shark, fan of film and literature.
Illustration by Vasilios Billy Mavreas.