"An absolutely dazzling confluence of big ideas and raw emotions, told in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s singular poetic voice. A Minor Chorus is about loving, questioning, and fighting for your life, and it’s as compelling a debut novel as I’ve read in years."— Jami Attenberg, author of I Came All This Way to Meet You
"No one breaks your heart as elegantly as Billy-Ray Belcourt. Innovative, intimate, and meticulous."— Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster
"A Minor Chorus is a rare gem of a book. We will be reading and rereading A Minor Chorus for decades to come."— Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
"A truly exceptional novel about how the disregarded sometimes live the most remarkable lives. A Minor Chorus is like a song that’s over too soon; I want to play it on repeat, to memorize the words so that I can sing them to myself."— Katherena Vermette, author of The Strangers
"An achingly gorgeous debut novel of Indigenous survival…This is a breathtaking and hypnotic achievement."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Following his essay collection, A History of My Brief Body, poet Belcourt, from the Driftpile Cree Nation, continues his exploration of Indigenous trauma and queerness in this erudite debut novel…Smart, thoughtful."— Kathy Sexton Booklist
"With his first novel, wunderkind Belcourt cements what has become increasingly clear across two poetry collections and a memoiristic book of essays: he is a fearless writer... [A Minor Chorus is] a ruminative constellation of ideas regarding colonial trauma, heteropatriarchy, and the innate sociality of writing; Belcourt’s boldest, freest, and most linguistically assured work yet."— Library Journal (starred review)
"A Minor Chorus is a feat of technical brilliance, a novel that questions the worth of writing even as it asserts its own value. It is a slippery, scholarly work, rooted in the layered complexity of Indigenous life."— Laura Sackton BookPage (starred review)
*WINNER OF THE 2023 BC AND YUKON ETHEL WILSON PRIZE*
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he's meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become-and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
1140914151
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he's meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become-and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
A Minor Chorus: A Novel
*WINNER OF THE 2023 BC AND YUKON ETHEL WILSON PRIZE*
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he's meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become-and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he's meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become-and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
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Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940175672719 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 09/27/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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