Coming Soon — Pierre Turgeon

A war film is gradually being made in the streets of Montreal. But is it really a film? An investigation is organized on three missing persons: the first, whose death is projected daily on the Commodore's screen in Cartierville; the second, a discoverer of America, murdered on a beach in Sept-Îles; and finally, a filmmaker who dreamed of a revolutionary film without artifice. These characters have decided to make their death so obvious that it will mark the memory of the world. The expression enigmatic novel takes on its full meaning with this live performance.ExcerptJack takes a mint from the saucer next to the money, then crosses the street and enters the theater. A padded wall of faux leather, topped with velvet curtains, separates the lobby from the movie theater. He climbs the stairs. In the mirror that covers the wall at the top of the stairs, he watches his reflection approach him, like a tilt shot taken with a zoom lens.The film's heroine cries. Erik is dead, she says over and over. Jack knows the scene by heart: a black pigeon has taken up residence on one of the fortress towers, causing Brünnhilde to grieve; it's the prearranged signal that Erik the Viking has fallen to his doom. But how could this bird have flown the distance between America and Norway in one night? How could you commit suicide so quickly that the reflection of the act would be so delayed that you could not watch yourself die?ReviewNever will we have read a book so violent and so restrained. In a classic prose because it was the only one that allowed him to play, Turgeon lies from the first to the last page, pretends to look for the assassin he knows well because he is in each of us like the stifled and drowned violence of our taverns. - Jacques Godbout, L'actualité.