DANTE’S INDIANA, CHEMICAL VALLEY, THE UNSEEN: Media Hits!

IN THE NEWS!

DANTE’S INDIANA

Randy Boyagoda, author of Dante’s Indiana (September 7, 2021), was interviewed on the Today Faith Podcast! The interview was posted on February 18, 2022. You can listen to the episode here!

Order Dante’s Indiana here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021) has been reviewed in Hamilton Arts & Letters! The review appears in issue 14.2, and was posted online on February 22, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Reviewer Jenn Carson writes,

“[A] masterful exploration of dirty nature writing … Chemical Valley’s stories, for all their dystopian demons, are balanced by Huebert’s insistence on penning his characters with an empathetic hand. His gaze may be harsh, like the reality we inhabit, but his love for his fellow man, and our desperate desire for connection, is unwavering.”

Order Chemical Valley here!

THE UNSEEN

The Unseen (April 7, 2020) by Roy Jacobsen, and translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, was reviewed in the North Bay Nipissing! The review of this first book in the Barrøy Chronicles was posted on February 19, 2022. You can check out the full review here.

Order The Unseen here!

Check out the sequel, White Shadow, here!

Preorder the third book in the series, Eyes of the Rigel here!

 

Play Along with THE MUSIC GAME

In celebration of our latest release, the staff at Biblioasis played ‘The Music Game,’ and came up with a selection of songs that we thought were good accompaniments to the reading experience.

During key moments throughout the book, the characters play their own version of the music game where someone begins to describe a scenario or a feeling, and another person answers with what they think is an appropriate song.

The Music Game seems to ask us to return to those vital conversations about the way we have been hurt and about wanting to make things better, even if the room to do that may feel so out of reach. It’s a book that allows us to escape our reality while also somehow facing it head-on. It’s a reminder of our fundamental interconnectedness, of the loss that still cuts through us every day, and, more than anything else, of the necessity of hope.” —Stacey May Fowles, Open Book

Check out our playlist below, and let us know what songs put you in a reading mood!

Get your copy of The Music Game here!

THE MUSIC GAME: Rave Reviews from the Toronto Star and more!

IN THE NEWS

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game (Feb. 8, 2022) by Stéfanie Clermont, trans. by JC Sutcliffe, has been reviewed in the Toronto Star! The review was published online on February 18, 2022. Read the full review here.

In his review, Steven Beattie writes:

“In her debut fiction, Montreal writer Stéfanie Clermont locates a 21st Century equivalent to the 1920s’ “lost generation” in a group of young people trying to find meaning and connection in a world of dead-end jobs, unaffordable housing, and romantic disappointments … The Music Game inhabits a liminal space between different bodies, psyches and geographies. Its characters can display the worst hipster traits — turning up their noses at Bruno Mars on a café stereo while genuflecting at the altar of Godspeed You! Black Emperor — and genuine insights into their inner selves and the nature of the world around them. If they share undeniable commonalities with lost generations before them, they are nonetheless, in Clermont’s hands, rendered specific and unique.”

Stéfanie Clermont was interviewed by Kenn at Shelf Life Books for their podcast, Book StormThe episode was published online on February 11, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

The Music Game was included on Boswell Book Company’s blog as a staff recommendation. Read the list of recommendations here.

Bookseller Kay Wosewick writes:

The Music Game is a delicious sneak peek into a generation (Millennials, of course) that acknowledges few boundaries, alternates between excess and emptiness, repeatedly taste-tests and spits out adulthood, and ebbs and flows within the cacophony that surrounds them. Yeah, a bit scary. But also exciting.”

The Music Game was also reviewed in the McGill Tribune and Apt613. Both reviews were published online on February 15, 2022.

In their review for the McGill Tribune, Louis Lussier-Piette writes:

The Music Game’s structure is what sets it apart. Each chapter tells a self-contained story from the point of view of someone within Sabrina’s inner circle, be it a long-lost friend or a neighbour … Clermont’s reflection on activism is skillfully nuanced, exploring both the hopefulness and cynicism that often come with political engagement.”

Read the full review here.

In their review for Apt613, Emmanuelle Gingras writes:

“[An} audacious, honest, and liberating masterpiece … The Music Game sends us on a journey through this contemporary reality. It enumerates all the ways that we love and destroy one another … The Music Game is about relationships, yet also about all the ways we desperately try to escape reality … anyone who’s ever experienced depression or anxiety will find healing through Stéfanie’s loyal and beautiful ways of describing the inexplicable. She allows for contradiction; depth and lightness meet in a disturbing but cathartic way.”

Read the full review here.

Order your copy of The Music Game from Biblioasis here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY, THE MUSIC GAME, SAY THIS, THE DAY-BREAKERS, HAIL THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN: Rave Reviews!

IN THE NEWS!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont (February 8, 2022) is now available in stores! The Music Game was listed by NYLON as ‘one of the best books coming out in February’ in a list published online on January 26, 2022. You can read the full article here.
Sophia June writes,
“Let’s hear it for an indie sleaze-era novel … class issues, deep friendship, betrayal, a gender transition and anti-globalization protests. You know, just ~Millennial~ stuff!”

The Music Game has been reviewed by Stacey May Fowles in Open Book. The review was posted online on February 3, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Stacey May Fowles writes,

The Music Game seems to ask us to return to those vital conversations about the way we have been hurt and about wanting to make things better, even if the room to do that may feel so out of reach. It’s a book that allows us to escape our reality while also somehow facing it head-on. It’s a reminder of our fundamental interconnectedness, of the loss that still cuts through us every day, and, more than anything else, of the necessity of hope.”

The Music Game was also featured as a bookseller pick on 49th Shelf! The recommendation was posted on February 8, 2022. See the full list of recommendations here.

Susan Chamberlain (The Book Keeper) writes,

“Stéfanie Clermont’s award-winning debut novel is impressive and makes me look forward to her future writings. The novel is told in short glimpses or snapshots of time in the lives of the main characters and their satellite friends. It is the story of three young women growing into themselves and finding their way in the 2010s. Sabrina, Celine, and Julie begin as idealistic, anti-capitalist protesters, working low-level jobs and struggling to pay rent. They come together and move apart as they form friendships and experience jealousy, rivalry, and grief. They discuss big-picture issues and the minutia of everyday life while they pursue sex, find love, fall into the pits of depression and deal with the death by suicide of Vincent, a young man in their friend circle. Clermont masterfully navigates the blurry devastation of grief with gritty realism blanketed in the writing skills of a poet. This novel contains many passages that made me stop and savour the author’s deft manipulation of language and her ability to bring deep emotion to the surface. This is a book that I can highly recommend to readers who enjoy discovering new, talented, contemporary writers.”

Stéfanie Clermont was interviewed on CBC Breakaway yesterday, on February 9, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

Order your copy of The Music Game here!

SAY THIS

The first chapter of Elise Levine’s forthcoming book, Say This (March 1, 2022), has been published as an excerpt on Open Book. The excerpt was published online on February 8, 2022. You can read the full excerpt here.

Of the book, Open Book writes,

“Two linked novellas function as one powerful storytelling magic trick. Formally ambitious but grounded in deep, unflinching, and complex emotional truth … Devastating, beautifully and intentionally fragmented, and arresting, Say This peels back the layers of power, violence, trauma, and guilt that surround its central crime.”

Preorder Say This from Biblioasis here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021), was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada! The review has been published online, and will appear in print in their March 2022 issue. You can read it here.

Reviewer André Forget writes,

“First in his 2017 collection Peninsula Sinking and now in Chemical Valley, Huebert’s uncanny facility for spinning densely poetic fiction out of the tawdry horror of twenty-first-century life has made him one of the most captivating authors of the past decade.”

Get your copy of Chemical Valley here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS & HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Hail, the Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver (April 5, 2022) and The Day-Breakers by Michael Fraser (April 5, 2022) were both listed by CBC Books as ‘Canadian poetry collections to watch for in spring 2022’! The list was published online on February 3, 2022. You can check out the full list here.

Preorder Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

Preorder the Day-Breakers here!