Description
A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he's ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city - until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
About the Author
Andre Forget was born in Toronto and raised in Mount Forest, Ontario. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Puritan, and his work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers in Canada and the United States. He currently lives in Sheffield in the United Kingdom.
Reviews
Funny, mysterious, completely unpredictable, and never didactic. * Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time *
Subtle, insistent, and adroit, Forget eroticizes art's decay under capitalism with stunning intelligence. This is an essential novel. * Paige Cooper, author of Zolitude *
Forget's intimacy with the finest details of music may remind fans of writer Daniel Silva. A first-class read; a little enlightenment is a bonus. * Winnipeg Free Press *
A detailed, sharply intellectual exploration of how people use and abuse art, while at the same time communicating the obsession and the intoxication that art offers for those who cannot live without it.
* Miramichi Reader *Awards
Long-listed for Scotiabank Giller Prize 2022 (Canada).
Book Information
ISBN 9781459749085
Author Andre Forget
Format Paperback
Page Count 328
Imprint Dundurn Group Ltd
Publisher Dundurn Group Ltd
Weight(grams) 390g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 19mm