The Man Who Hated Emily Bronte: A Novel

A comic satire of contemporary Montreal by the man who redefined experimental prose for Canada. This is a comic counterpart — not a sequel — to Ray Smith’s previous novel, The Man Who Loved Jane Austen, his melancholic take on family division and nationalist politics in late-nineties Quebec.rnrnHired to teach in a junior college, Will Franklyn has come to Montreal expecting a life to proceed much as it had in Nova Scotia where he grew up, or in Edmonton or Edinburgh where he studied. But “in Quebec everything — all law, all logic, all human behaviour — is topsy-turvy.” Trusting and bemused, Will manages — just — to stay sane in the midst of lunacy.rnrnIn this novel, Smith demonstrates once again that he is a master of comic fiction, leading us a merry chase round the mountain. The familiar places are there — Schwartz’s, the St. Viateur Bagel Shop, the Big O — but lurking behind every familiar certainty is the unexpected, the bizarre, the topsy-turvy.