Born during the Great Depression, Jean-Claude Morel is an Everyman, a Montreal construction worker whose hands have helped build the city he lives in. He has dug out its metro tunnels, shaped islands in the Saint-Laurent river, and built the expressways that wind through the city’s core. But progress has come at a cost. Neighbourhoods are razed, streets cleared off the map, and the Morel family is expropriated.
Bristling with life, Morel unearths a story of Montreal long buried beneath years of dazzling urban renewal and modernization projects. This expertly crafted literary novel—a stylistic tour-de-force—is a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, and a monument to his city.
Maxime Raymond Bock was born in Montreal, where he lives today. His first book, Atavismes, a collection of short stories, won the Prix Adrienne-Choquette It was pubished as Atavisms in 2015. The English translation of Bock’s novella, Des lames de pierre, Baloney, appeared in 2016. Morel, his début novel, was awarded the prize for the Rendez-vous du premier roman in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Prix des libraires, the Prix littéraire des collégien∙ne∙s, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and the Prix Senghor.
Melissa Bull is a Montreal translator, writer, and editor. Author of a collection of fiction, The Knockoff Eclipse, a collection of poetry, Rue, she has also translated Marie-Sissi Labrèche’s novel, Borderline, Pascale Rafie’s play, The Baklawa Recipe, and Nelly Arcan’s collection, Burqa of Skin. She was the editor and translator of Maisonneuve magazine’s “Writing from Quebec” column for a decade, and her fiction, essays, and interviews have been widely published.
“One of the greatest Quebec novelists and short story writers of our time.”— Lettres québécoises (for their Fall 2022 issue dedicated to Maxime Raymond Bock’s work)
Reviews
“Morel is an astounding book … QC Fiction is highly proficient at finding important books written in French and having them translated into English to reach a wider audience. Morel is no exception. It is a vital book, a mini epic of an ordinary man, and a time capsule of post-war Montreal with all its problems, economic, political, and environmental. I highly recommend this book to anyone, but those most familiar with the city and its neighbourhoods will get additional insights into Mr. Bock’s Montreal.” James Fisher, founding editor of The Miramichi Reader
“The author's verb is […] as precise as the gestures he describes, as rich as the demons that agitate Morel, as teeming as the vanished neighbourhood. And it turns out to be unexpectedly beautiful: a deeply buried nugget of gold, freshly extracted, coated with earth, that suddenly begins to shine.” Josée Boileau, Journal de Montréal
“A novel, monumental and aerial at the same time.★★★★” Philippe Manevy, Lettres Québécoises
“The most flawless and spirited working-class saga you’ll have the pleasure of reading this year.” —Olivier Boisvert, for Morel, Librairie Gallimard
“Maxime Raymond Bock affirms, with Morel, his unique signature of erudition and humanity.” — Mario Cloutier, for Morel, La Presse
About Bock's work.
Praise for Baloney
“[Bock’s] deeply original writing always seeks out the mot juste, then sculpts them into sentences that describe the slightest variations of human emotions in spectacular complexity, harnessing the power of form, rhythm, and sound.”
—Mario Cloutier, La Presse
“Bock is really stepping into a much older tradition. You can picture versions of Robert and his conflicted follower in the pages of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, even Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education. To this lineage, Bock brings something very much his own, and very much Quebec: Baloney is a touching character study, but it could also be read, if you’re so inclined, as a parable for what became of a certain kind of cultural idealism. Bock hits a note that balances gentle mockery with genuine affection and laces it all with a perfectly sustained comic melancholy. Then he steps aside and leaves the reverberations to do their work. Yes, you’ll read Baloney quickly. But you’re highly unlikely to read it only once.”
—Ian McGillis, for Baloney, The Montreal Gazette
Praise for Atavisms:
“Crackles with the energy of a Québécois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic ... As in Bolaño’s work, narrative itself is often the subject; stories are folded within other stories and narrators are constantly asserting their presence ... Like Bolaño, Bock alternates between rage, sorrow, protest, and dark comedy, and the two writers share a sense of urgency—of writing against time as much as about it.”
—Pasha Malla, for Atavisms, The New Yorker
“Bock creates an impressive diversity of voices.”
—Andrew Irwin, for Atavisms, The Times Literary Supplement