Gesticulating Gentrification

It was the 1980s, and Rick Trembles was just a suburban casualty—at least according to the songs of the punk band he played guitar for, The Electric Vomit. Now, those same lyrics are plastered on the pages of his graphic memoir, Gesticulating Gentrification (Conundrum). With an older and more reflective, yet still rebellious, spirit, the cartoonist and musician embarks on a witty trip down a corridor of memories. Trembles splits the story into chapters detailing honest tales of family dynamics; the cuts and bruises of early adulthood; and the financial insecurity of life in bustling Montreal. The memoir follows Trembles’ adventures through his time working as an apprentice at a commercial art studio, losing that job and moving back in with his parents, then moving into an apartment so ancient that it’s eventually slated for demolition by the landlord. These sagas exemplify the book’s central theme: Trembles’ wacky-yet-valiant fight against greedy capitalist interests. Gesticulating Gentrification is, at its core, relatable and charming. As Trembles grapples with weighty themes like the housing crisis, he never fails to elicit a much-needed laugh with his playful style. This humour, with its ability to lighten the gloom of the topics, becomes the memoir’s greatest gift. —Nathan Abraha

Horsefly 

Anchored by an unsettling depiction of the Saint-Laurent River just north of Quebec City, Mireille Gagné’s Horsefly (Coach House) gives voice to the forgotten nature around us. The novel imagines a world where the environment keeps score across generations, tabulating humanity’s crimes against it. Working at the intersection of historical fiction and ecological horror, Gagné skillfully situates the tale between three interwoven paths: a scientist in 1942, sent to manufacture biological weapons on the island of Grosse-Île under laborious, hazardous conditions; a factory worker in 2025, bitten by a horsefly; and, most chillingly, the collective horsefly consciousness in 2028, which grows more sentient with each passing page. Gagné’s prose, translated into English by Pablo Strauss, delivers eerily beautiful imagery of the prison-like 1940s Grosse-Île and the twenty-first-century factory. But it’s the chapters with the titular horsefly that really captivate, daring readers to think of the creature as something greater than an annoying pest with a stinging bite. When the insects weaponize humanity’s past mistakes against it, Horsefly suggests that nature’s revenge will not be merciful: it will be calculated and precise. As we collectively face the horrors of the climate to come, Gagné asks whether the balance must be regained through human diminishment, and reminds us that the consequences of environmental destruction are already here. —Caroline Bellamy

This Book is a Knife

With a plethora of pop culture and political references, L.E. Fox’s essay collection This Book is a Knife (Arsenal Pulp) tackles the intersection of climate change and capitalism with sharp humour. The comedic elements, like sarcasm and well-placed expletives, amplify Fox’s points as they argue that capitalism is the root of all evil, including the climate crisis. But Fox, whose writing is equally conversational and confrontational, doesn’t simplify the narrative. They weave in complex topics even when at their most experimental: “Say the Quiet Part Out Loud,” for example, formatted like a screenplay and mostly consisting of dialogue between two people, conveys insights about the evolving meaning of the working class citizen. Fox strikes a balance between the heavy research and more entertaining flourishes, with clearly-explained statistics and contextualizing footnotes sitting beside invocations of works like The Great Gatsby. The stylistic eccentricity is what shines best in the collection. Instead of hammering home points that readers already likely know—like that the earth is dying and it’s all our fault—Fox finds alternative ways to examine climate change with clever language, making the topic accessible. Fox illustrates that if we stop and consider how our world is structured, we can imagine new solutions toward a safer future. —Alexa MacKie

Other Worlds 

André Alexis’ Other Worlds (McClelland & Stewart) begins in 1857 with a Trinidadian Obeah man asking a snake to kill him so as to avoid being brought to London by colonists, and rarely lets up from there. The collection of short stories infuses the domain of human relationships with the magical and the gothic, travelling from the nineteenth-century Caribbean to contemporary small-town Ontario. Alexis uses otherworldly elements not to dazzle, but to subtly illuminate emotionally profound aspects of our personal and interpersonal realities. The vulnerability of an isolated small town’s citizens is highlighted using a body-horror plot; the way that colonial trauma is passed down intergenerationally takes on a more concrete reality when an angry ancestor occupies his descendant’s body. Under Alexis’ ever-delicate pen, even the most absurd of circumstances—a talking horse who wants to have Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason read to him, say—becomes not fantastical, nor even remarkable in itself. Far more impactful is what these circumstances have to reveal about the grief, resentment, pain and love that pass within and between people. These “other worlds” are, in the end, very much our own. —Nour Abi-Nakhoul