THE MUSIC GAME: Rave Reviews from the Toronto Star and more!
IN THE NEWS
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 Storm. The 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!
