Kevin Chong Libros

A modern retelling of the Camus classic that posits its story of infectious disease and quarantine in our contemporary age of social justice and rising inequity.

During the week following the death of his long-absent famous folksinger mother, Saul St. Pierre must contend with the TV crews, fans, and assorted oddballs who flood the suburb where he lives, even as he struggles to understand his motherrsquo;s reasons for taking her own life -and for abandoning him years before. It doesnrsquo;t help matters that his stepmother, Jana, the only reliable adult hersquo;s ever known, is dating a cop who wants to marry her. And he and his friend Navi are suspended from school for staging a demonstration against censorship. Then there is the arrival of the two young women from New York, inspired by the St. Pierresrsquo; nostalgia boom, who come to worship at the feet of Saulrsquo;s father, an alcohol-guzzling musical has-been. But this is no mere tale of motherless youth, because Kevin Chong eschews the melodramatic and familiar to create an inspired -and sometimes absurd -coming-of-age story that embraces the unexpected poetry of tacky pop culture and marginal celebrity. And whether Baroque-a-Nova is read as a ldquo;witty postmodern farcerdquo; (The Globe and Mail) or a ldquo;deftly shaped, deceptively simple story about a boy poised on the threshold of manhoodrdquo; (The Vancouver Sun), it is, to its very core, about love, forgiveness, and the search for truth and beauty in our junked-up lives.

A unique work of metafiction follows Benson Yu, a writer, who loses control of his own narrative when he attempts to write the story of his fraught upbringing in 1980s Chinatown.