Guernica Editions

Jack Kerouac meets Beau Dommage! This novel of a coming-of-age in the Montreal music scene of the Seventies is a Québécois blues, wise, pungent, and funny.

Named after a song, the novel is also structured like one. The sections of the book are listed as "verses," with shorter "choruses" in between, ending with a bridge and a final chorus. No mere gimmick, the book-as-song device hints at the careful structure Beauchemin devised for this time-shifting narrative. Fluid transitions occur as tonal shifts when new facets of Michel's life come to light and subsequently accrue meaning... What emerges is a thoughtful, detailed portrait of the many ways sadness in life is linked to beauty. And though the novel is openly nostalgic, it avoids easy pay-offs and simplified life lessons.

The structure of this book is amazing. Literary geeks may want to sit down and map out the timeline on paper, with arrows to indicate the transitions. How does the author get us from the traffic jam, to a chalet 30 years earlier, to a record store not long after that, to a marital argument just a few years back? I suggest this as a topic of further study at Beauchemin's alma mater, Concordia University, where he took creative writing. I also recommend this book for book clubs... Who knows, you might need to reconvene next awards season to raise your glass to Beauchemin and the future of the regional novel.