Description
Garry Thomas Morse has published several collections of poetry, notably Discovery Passages, about the history of his Kwakwaka’wakw Indigenous ancestors, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, and Prairie Harbour, also shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award. His novels have gained critical attention for pushing the aesthetic envelope. He is the author of a speculative fiction series called The Chaos! Quincunx, and two of its three books have been nominated for the ReLit Award. Morse is the recipient of the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist. He has also served as the 2018 Jack McClelland Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto, and the 2019 Carol Shields Writer-in-Residence at the University of Winnipeg.
When Tom, an art house aficionado, returns to his hometown to attend the Brolleywood film studies conference, he discovers that his ex-girlfriend Esme has recently married their former prof, Cinny. Contact with the couple, gossip with his friend Nasim, and flirtation with a Hollywood bit player known as Lady Lex draw Tom into a noirish plot that may have Chabrol-ish consequences for his rival, and permanently distance him from his fiancée, a skilled harpsichordist named Ciana. As he navigates shifting islands of personal memory, Tom begins to wonder if life is not just a retcon (or the most contrived form of retroactive continuity). The price of admission includes an amateur opera matinee, a pub discourse on Godard-McBride Breathless Paradox, a giallo nightmare, and a hypnagogic hallucination inspired by a Tarkovsky retrospective, all threatened by the skintight spectre of the next superhero franchise.