Alice Zorn

Set in Montreal on the eve of Y2K, the novel weaves together the stories of Joelle and Marc, Ketia, the Haitian nurse Marc has become obsessed with, and Joelle's best friend since childhood, Diane, and her live-in boyfriend Nazim. The dilemnas in this book are very human, and heart-breakingly realistic: miscommunication, cultural differences, self-delusion all come to a head in one way or another for all the characters.

Critique:
This is a tightly written book; if this book was a scarf, there would be no dropped stitches. Zorn weaves her way through the different lives of her characters in such a way that each crisis parallels another character's crisis.
And I don't want to give too much away, but let us say that though the fight scenes do not hold back any punches in the emotionally brutal arena. Marc's growing resentment of Joelle and her refusal to recognise it until he leaves is almost unbearable. His complete self-delusion about Ketia, twenty years his junior and from a very close knit cultural community, is almost tragicomic. Driving through both Ketia and Marc's story as well as Nazim (who hails from Morrocco) and Diane's is the hard reality that it is easier to connect with an individual than it is to a different culture, a reality we face daily here in the multi-ethnic Montreal.

To conclude my little rave fest, I honestly could not put this book down ( I read it in a couple of days, which is saying a lot since I've been working ten hour days...). Zorn doesn't mince words - her writing is sparse, tight and lyrical.

Highly recommended.… (meer)