Review: The Weight of Snow by Christian Guay-Poliquin
I have a short list of writers that I read without hesitation. Most of them are never mentioned by my acquaintances so they seem to be a bit outside mainstream popular reading. They are characterised by very even-toned poetic works containing rather human stories with no fireworks. Perhaps the best known are Jim Crace and Graham Swift but others include Hubert Mingarelli and Laurent Gaudé. I am now ready to add Christian Guay-Poliquin to this pantheon.
He is a Canadian writer recommended to my wife (on my behalf) by my bookseller this summer. I could tell from the blurb that it was his second novel. Having read it (in French) I went exploring to find out if it has been translated and IT HAS!!!! Indeed, it turns out that this novel was a sequel to the first so I probably should have read the other (Running on Fumes) first. Never mind! I’ll read it next.
Some apocalypse has occurred, rarely mentioned and never explained. The protagonists are in a cabin in a Rocky Mountain type of terrain with no electricity, one an old man wishing to get home, the other a young man with broken legs. That’s all I’m saying.
Read it, its worth it.
Update April 2020: … especially now in a Pandemic!!
Asynchronists 