Squatters at a rural gas station try to find freedom and build something new on the ashes of our petrocivilization in this sensual novel.
A community of outsiders takes over an abandoned gas station. They spend their days ripping up asphalt, drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and wandering through woods and towns in search of new ways of living. People come and go: a charismatic landscaper, Italian anarchists, a policewoman, travellers. A teenager drifts into homelessness. And The Girl With No Name keeps a journal of her attempts to meet new people and sleep with them, sex that is “not a sideline” but the motivating force in a story she is struggling to understand.
Neighbors grow hostile. An investigation threatens the community. Tension builds between the surface violence of “normal life” and the attempt of these outsiders to experience freedom and build something new on the ashes of our oil-addicted society.
With a character borrowed from Agnès Varda’s Vagabond and inspiration taken from Anne Boyer’s writings, Anne Lardeux’s highly original debut assembles elements of poetry, film, and visual arts into an exuberant choral novel, an ode to the daughters of fire and to the poetry of the body. Often funny, sometimes raunchy, consistently surprising, never flinching, The Second Substance heralds an important new voice in Quebec literature.
Authors
- Pages
- 152
- Published in
- Canada
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Half Title Page 3
- Title Page 5
- Copyright Page 6
- Dedication 7
- Women Standing in the Evening Light 13
- Grounds and Arguments 14
- The crackle of doubt 17
- Journal of the girl with no name 20
- I got this 27
- Journal of the girl with no name 28
- The salamander 32
- Lines on the floor 34
- The policewoman's confession 38
- A persistent, unsubstantiated story 40
- Journal of the girl with no name 42
- The policewoman';s stolen mirrors 47
- The parade of innovation 50
- The afternoon rolls by like a parade 52
- Journal of the girl with no name 55
- Substance is resistant 56
- Flatlands and rise 58
- Journal of the girl with no name 61
- The station gets to work 62
- Feast Day 65
- Our story peels out in a red corvette 67
- Journal of the girl with no name 70
- Journal of the girl with no name 76
- Memory of an interrogation 79
- Journal of the girl with no name 82
- O Bella Ciao 86
- Not What I Imagined 88
- Journal of the girl with no name 89
- Is she to o young to run away? 94
- Journal of the girl with no name 95
- Journal of the runaway 98
- The cold sets in 104
- Journal of the girl with no name 108
- Journal of the runaway 111
- A Parallel Station 117
- Journal of the girl with no name 119
- Back to the runaway 122
- I have no idea where I'm going either 126
- Frainetti's working notes 127
- The runaway has found a commune 129
- Frainetti documents the world 131
- Journal of the girl with no name 132
- Frainetti unrolls a map 133
- Journal of the girl with no name 134
- I am made of stubborn stuff 138
- Night falls and so do our bodies 139
- Journal of the girl with no name 141
- The girl with no name 143
- The trial 145
- By way of an ending 149
- About the Author 153