A Minor Chorus
ABOUT
THE BOOK
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents. An unnamed narrator abandons grad school and returns to northern Alberta in search of answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness. What ensues is a series of conversations amounting to an autobiography of his hometown. Whether meeting with an auntie lamenting the imprisonment of her grandson or lingering in bed with a married man, the narrator makes space for his companions to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
An experimental debut novel from a rising literary star that interweaves the modern queer and Indigenous experiences through a narrator in search of a narrative that is eluding him. (Winnipeg Public Library). Is writing a novel enough to change anything? Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus is a stunning work of meta-fiction about a depressed Indigenous academic who leaves the university to tell the stories of the people at home. Part novel, part theory of the novel, A Minor Chorus explores how different characters in the book either consciously or unconsciously understand the larger narratives of racism and power that they are caught up in. This is a slim, capacious book that combines intense emotions, big ideas and gorgeous language, transcendent with Cree joy rising from the pages. (Ottawa Public Library)