Prizes and Awards:
Amazon.ca/Books in Canada
First Novel Award Winner 2003
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Product Description
Amazon.ca
Black Bird, Michel Basilières's superb first novel, tries to be the One Hundred Years of Solitude of Quebec's October Crisis, and, by and large, it fulfills this lofty ambition. Basilières invites his readers into the home of Montreal's Desouche family, an eccentric household that harbours a terrorist, a handful of grave-robbers, two official languages, a crow, a ghost, and a matriarch in a coma. Once the story has settled comfortably into this little ménage, things begin to get weird. It begins with an explosion, when Marie Desouche inadvertently murders her Anglophone maternal grandfather by bombing a popular smoked-meat restaurant. This tragedy inaugurates a very bad year for the Desouches--these hapless and impoverished ne'er-do-wells become embroiled in all of Quebec's troubles, from the premier's drunk-driving mishap to the John Cross murder. Along the way, Basilières shoots sly winks at Voltaire, Stevenson, Mary Shelley, and Bulgakov (Woland from The Master and Margarita makes a cameo appearance as a theatrical impresario).
This tale of Quebec's peoples and politics is a brutally harsh one; while Basilières occasionally allows himself to pity his characters, Black Bird has more in common with Marie-Claire Blais's scathing early novels (such as Dürer's Angel) than the love-redeemed Montreal of Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant. Aside from his habit of hectoring his readers with grave generalizations, Basilières is a fantastic storyteller, and his talent and chutzpah allow him to get away with a depiction of Montreal that will likely incense those who love the city best. While it isn't a perfect novel, Basilières's debut is a stronger, more original book than most novelists ever manage to write. Malicious, riotous, and moving, Black Bird is an anarchic Two Solitudes for the 21st century. --Jack Illingworth
Books in Canada
If Black Bird, by Michel Basilieres, were a painting it would be called "Two Solitudes", by Picasso. Set in Montreal this is a giant mulligatawny of a novel, violent one moment, hilarious the next, full of impossible happenings, perhaps closer to the work of Tom Robbins, though influenced by Jarry and Robbe-Grillet.
To begin with, Grandfather is a grave robber. He sells his corpses to a mad Dr. Hyde, who is a Canadian Dr. Frankenstein. Grandfather has a new wife, and a house full of weird relatives. His grandson is a self-absorbed, talentless poet, who, of course, becomes successful. His granddaughter makes bombs and executes kidnappings for the FLQ. They all live in a drafty Adams Family house, stealing gas and electricity from the funeral home next door. When the new wife realizes she has married into a family of criminals she says something to the effect that true crime doesn't pay. The black bird is a crow named Grace, who pecks out one of grandfather's eyes, though grandfather later learns to see through his glass eye. One of the granddaughter's bombs kills her other grandfather by mistake, causing her mother to go to sleep and stay asleep for months. The granddaughter's seditious political pamphlets get mixed in with the grandson's maudlin poetry and he gets arrested. There is a hit and run committed by the Quebec Premier, and the police, to cover up the event, bring the dead FLQ cell leader, the granddaughter's lover, to the grandfather to dispose of, which he does by selling the body to Dr. Hyde. Things spiral out of control when the Granddaughter kidnaps and murders a British diplomat and hides the body in the basement of Grandfather's house. Wild and unpredictable, crammed with black humor, it reads like a very entertaining fairy tale gone wrong.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
To begin with, Grandfather is a grave robber. He sells his corpses to a mad Dr. Hyde, who is a Canadian Dr. Frankenstein. Grandfather has a new wife, and a house full of weird relatives. His grandson is a self-absorbed, talentless poet, who, of course, becomes successful. His granddaughter makes bombs and executes kidnappings for the FLQ. They all live in a drafty Adams Family house, stealing gas and electricity from the funeral home next door. When the new wife realizes she has married into a family of criminals she says something to the effect that true crime doesn't pay. The black bird is a crow named Grace, who pecks out one of grandfather's eyes, though grandfather later learns to see through his glass eye. One of the granddaughter's bombs kills her other grandfather by mistake, causing her mother to go to sleep and stay asleep for months. The granddaughter's seditious political pamphlets get mixed in with the grandson's maudlin poetry and he gets arrested. There is a hit and run committed by the Quebec Premier, and the police, to cover up the event, bring the dead FLQ cell leader, the granddaughter's lover, to the grandfather to dispose of, which he does by selling the body to Dr. Hyde. Things spiral out of control when the Granddaughter kidnaps and murders a British diplomat and hides the body in the basement of Grandfather's house. Wild and unpredictable, crammed with black humor, it reads like a very entertaining fairy tale gone wrong.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
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