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Rating: 
Summary: HA! ...No laughing matter.
Review: This is simply the most unique and impressive book I have ever come across. It weighs in at a whopping 1.6 Kg or 3 1/2lbs. After 6 straight days of reading I feel educated, voyeuristic, saddened and have a deeper sense of insight into Quebec History and Aquin's literary influences. The book, 26 years in the making, is the story of Hubert Aquin's life and ultimate death by his own 'words'. Sheppard explicitly depicts Aquin's life and death as a work of art with respect to a long tradition of such in literature and film. Through quotes, musical interludes and interviews Aquin's last violent act was a work of art by a shattered man. His life, full of tragedy (self-inflicted or otherwise), love and loss, begat several classics in Quebec Literature, namely Prochain Episode. Sheppard's book surely merits a wide audience as does the work of Aquin. I urge you to consider reading this book. Excellent value for the $$. Do pick up and read a copy... it is like jumping off a floating dock in the middle of a familiar lake of your childhood memories. You can swim safely near the tether and enjoy the security that its proximity provides, or risk wading farther away and try to touch the bottom to see how deep you can go. Metaphors aside, it is better to use Sheppard's own words from his 1969 essay, Violence and the French Canadian Male, an early critique of Aquin's first two novels, "We all must try to understand how to be worthy of it." ** Canada: A Guide to the Peaceable Kingdom, ed. William Kilbourn. p.192.
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