Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa

By André Alexis

Book Overview

These eight stories reveal a world that's both recognizable and strange: cities of anxiety and violence, where quiet inhabitants lead outwardly banal lives that conceal sinister interiors. The premises, both fantastic and surreal, are also eerily plausible; they often follow the logic of dreams where the real can appear in disguise. Though geographically rooted, the setting - from Ottawa to Toronto and the South of France - take on an ephemeral dimension: the geography is of the subconscious. With his darkly philosophical bent and sly humour, Alexis has fashioned an underworld and limned it with light. Despair quakes with life and sings with the imaginative brilliance of one of the most accomplished new talents writing today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771006667
• ISBN13: 9780771006661
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Despair and other feelings

Andre Alexis' fiction collection, Despair and other stories, deals with relationships, love, and the darkness within us all. The stories are often fantastical, with a great deal of horror and humor, but they speak to real situations, fears, and life. Recurring themes are of dreams (especially nightmares), family, hands and fingers (or the absence of such), types of cloth, coincidence, sex, and death. The characters use each other (most notable in the story of a soucouyant), often acting cruelly. They then have philosophical discussions or meditations about good and evil, right and wrong, god, and the purpose of life. The stories do tend to end abruptly, with a sense of things left unfinished, unsaid, and unexplained, but this serves a purpose and leaves one feeling unsettled rather than unsatisfied.