Last Days of Montreal

"Last Days of Montreal" by John Brooke is one heck of a book. This slim volume is jam-packed with the cultural signifiers and memory of a city, province, and even country wracked with all sorts of problems.

Set in the mid 1990s, there's lots going on in Montréal. The referendum on Québec sovereignty, economic stumbles, the anglophone exodus, dilapitating infrastructure, and snow (although that's not limited to any epoch). The characters are all struggling through the confluence of their day to day lives which are coloured by the event unfolding around them. The connections between the individual stories are deftly woven - one person's activities meld into the lives of one, two, or more other characters, which then tie in to another, and then the circle closes, back to the first person again. The story whirlwinds through their lives, leaving the feeling of being out of control - much like the people in their situations - but both at the end of narrative snapshots, and at the end of the larger tale, the end really gives the sense of not really closure, but evolution on the parts of the characters.

The book is far too long and far too complex to undertake a full description and analysis of the characters and events - besides, I don't think I could do it justice! The book though, takes its title from one of the central characters - "Last Days," a vagrant who is confined to an electric wheelchair after having his legs crushed during a protest against some municipal undertaking. He wanders the streets, intervening in generally crude, even perserse, manner, in people's lives, in a form of brutal honesty. His is a repulsive character - but one who personifies the vibrancy of the city in a one-man struggle against the decline, trying to incite the people he comes across into life.

The book's treatment of the affairs of the day is aware, astute and incisive, from the English-French conflict (ici on parles français), to the vicissitudes of the global economy, to the cultural significance of snowfall and snow clearing and beyond.

Wholeheartedly recommended.