The Hollow Beast (trade paper)

Description

Don QuixotemeetsWho Framed Roger Rabbitin this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge.In 1911, in a hockey game in Quebecs Gasp Peninsula, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck into Monti Bouges mouth. When Monti collapses with his head across the goal line, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts. Montis ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls over three generations, one hundred years and dozens of alcohol-soaked tall tales, from treachery in northern gold-mining camps to the appearance of a legendary beast by turns playful and ferocious. Its up to Montis grandson, Franois, to make sense of the vendetta between Monti and Bradley that has shaped the destiny of their town and everyone who lives there. In a sumptuous, unpredictable language and slapstick comedy, Christophe Bernard reveals himself as a master of epic storytelling.Praise forThe Hollow BeastChristophe Bernard has hollowed out the past like a beast and, like an alchemist, has excavated a language of pure gold. He has added a great, savage nugget to Quebec literature.La Presse(Montreal)Christophe Bernard scores a huge hit withThe Hollow Beast He gives birth to a sort of crazed novel in the form of a fireworks show Bernard slips into the patchwork skin of a kind of Thomas Pynchon crossbred with Rabelais and Victory-Lvy Beaulieu (with a pint of James Joyce) His writing is flamboyant with vernacular flights. An example of utter mastery.Le Devoir(Montreal)The reader swims in sheer delirium readingThe Hollow Beast, a novel from the Gasp that takes place over several generations. Passionate and unsettling A universe plugged in at 10,000 volts!Radio CanadaA tale with plenty of momentum that covers a whole century and is at once fantastic, funny, cruel, brilliant.Le Journal de MontralA family saga unlike any other And its funny! I envy this writers talent.LActualit(Montreal)