The Music Game

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http://.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/00_BK007-BO_MUSIC-GAME_SAMPLE.mp3Winner of the 2023 French-American Translation Prize for FictionNot far away from here is a lake. You have to pay for access to its shores, but I know where theres a hole in the fence.The water will be icy, but it will still be in a liquid state.Thats what I will do today. I will go through the hole in the fence and Ill dive into the icy water.And then Ill go home.Friends since grade school, Cline, Julie, and Sabrina come of age at the start of a new millennium, supporting each other and drifting apart as their lives pull them in different directions. But when their friend dies by suicide in the abandoned city lot where they once gathered, they must carry on in the world that left him behindone they once dreamed they would change for the better. From the grind of Montreal service jobs, to isolated French Ontario countryside childhoods, to the tenuous cooperation of Bay Area punk squats, the three young women navigate everyday losses and fears against the backdrop of a tumultuous twenty-rst century. An ode to friendship and the ties that bind us together, Stfanie Clermonts award-winningThe Music Gameconfronts the violence of the modern world and pays homage to those who work in the hope and faith that it can still be made a better place.Audiobook read by Karie RichardsPraise forThe Music GameMany have been the millennial offerings Ive read the past year, and while there is much to recommend the book I keep thinking about is Stfanie ClermontsThe Music Game. An amalgam of short stories, childhood remembrances, dolorous journaling and deeply-felt romances, this multi-prize-winning novel is an ode to friends who seek alternatives to the systems theyve inherited.Alex Pugsley, for theGlobe and MailLets 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!NYLONIn her debut fiction, Montreal writer Stfanie 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 Gameinhabits a liminal space between different bodies, psyches and geographies. Its characters can display the worst hipster traits 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 Clermonts hands, rendered specific and unique.Toronto StarThe Music Gameseems 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. Its a book that allows us to escape our reality while also somehow facing it head on. Its 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.Open BookA stunning, incisive immersion into a community of young radical activists finding love, experiencing violence, rejecting hegemony and struggling to survive financially in a world of dead-end jobs.Winnipeg Free PressSimilar to the extremely successful Irish-millennial author Sally Rooney, [Clermont] portrays the complex feelings and emotions of her characters in simple terms, thus making them feel universal.The Charlatan[An] audacious, honest, and liberating masterpiece The Music Gameis about relationships, yet also about all the ways we desperately try to escape reality anyone whos ever experienced depression or anxiety will find healing through Stfanies loyal and beautiful ways of describing the inexplicable. She allows for contradiction; depth and lightness meet in a disturbing but cathartic way.Apt613The Music Games structure is what sets it apart. Each chapter tells a self-contained story from the point of view of someone within Sabrinas inner circle, be it a long-lost friend or a neighbour Clermonts reflection on activism is skillfully nuanced, exploring both the hopefulness and cynicism that often come with political engagement.The McGill TribuneStfanie Clermont confronts the futility of the pursuit of sex, rent, and art with a rare clarity.The Music Gamemay well show us how to absolve ourselves by sheer force of yearning alone.Paige Cooper, Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated author ofZolitudeThe Music Gameis a bruising, jubilant, prismatic book, inhabiting the space where short stories and the novel overlap. Clermont writes with clear-eyed insight, imbuing her characters and their knotty relationships with dazzling vitality, even as many of them question whether they can bear to stay in this world or not.H. Felix Chau Bradley, author ofPersonal Attention RoleplayHere is a clear, burning voice whose subject is uncertainty. Everything is precarious for young people inThe Music Game: income, love, gender. This is a moving and melancholy portrait of a generation of urban people who have been promised absolutely nothing for sure.Russell Smith, Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated author ofConfidenceStfanie Clermonts multi-vocal bookThe Music Gameis a compelling debut, precise and vivid in its observations and deeply attuned to the emotional cadences of its characters. By turns, funny, tender, and harrowing,The Music Gametells a story that feels both urgent and elegiac.Faye Guenther, author ofSwimmers in WinterPraise for the French edition ofThe Music GameA remarkably well constructed first book.La Presse(Montreal)The reader isnt spared the characters suffering, and what shines is a new voice, one were eager to hear more from.Publishers Weekly (Quebec supplement)InThe Music Gamethe moments when everything shifts are numerous and hold readers breathless because we know that nothing can be taken for granted, that a sudden reversal in fate or the unexpected reaction of a female character can turn everything upside down at the turn of a page.Les libraires(Montreal)The voices Clermont creates make themselves heard as a rich, unusual pleasure of the sort one rarely encounters.Revue Spirale(Montreal)In spite of the lack of ambition of its rather directionless characters, Clermonts collection proves to be a work of a breadth that is quite unusual in the Quebec literary landscape.Revue Libert(Montreal)The Music Gamehas a very contemporary vibe in which the desire to live opens a makeshift path between apathy and revolt. Precision, lyricism, deep feeling: a hit for the youth of the 2010s.Grazia(France)