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I’ve been catching up on some of these after a busy labour day weekend, but there are a few good reviews of Dans la Cage, just published, as I mentioned in the last post, by the mighty Editions Albin Michel. There are also some bad reader reviews I’ve seen on social media, but I am not posting all of those too because this is my crappy wordpress and I do whatever I want on it and everything will be fine…

The first one, and the one that I’ve found from a regular publication, is from Page des libraries, “a literary magazine created by Sidney Habib in the late 1980s to deal with the advent of cultural superstores… distributed free of charge in participating bookstores and sold by subscription.” (from wiki). In that one, according to google translate, they said the following:

“Blood and blows: this first black, bitter and sometimes sensual novel by Canadian Kevin Hardcastle offers us two magnificent portraits: one of a man who knows he is lost but continues to fight until the end; the other of his wife who tries to save him. Magistral.”

Read the full review here, and my thanks to Madeline Roth of Librarie L’Eau vive, Avignon for the kinds words.

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Here you can find another review on the blog of Les Miss Choclatine Bouquinent, and this reader managed to see through the blood and guts to get to the story of the family at the heart of the novel, and talks about the writing itself, which I like. Check it out.

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And, here’s another from Le nuit je mens, which I first saw from an Instagram post by the author, who goes by @FlyingElectra/theflyingelectra on social media. These all seems to be blogs by avid readers and often published French authors, but they’re all quite impressive and well curated, as opposed to this piece of shit I’ve made. Take a gander here…

There’s a few more if you look for the book or my name on social media, but these were some of the most thorough and positive. Hopefully there’ll be some more to come, and I’ll be able to talk to some of these keen French readers at Festival America in a few weeks. It’s hard to guess at how the novel will do from over here, but Albin Michel clearly has a magical reputation and they’re doing a great job of getting the word out.

More to come soon. Take care, all.

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As of last week, Dans la Cage, previously known around the land as In the Cage, has been published by Albin Michel, one of the leading literary publishers in France, and the kind of house that publishes translations of writers like Donald Ray Pollock, Stephen King, Claire Vaye Watkins, Colson Whitehead, and this random guy from Midland, Ontario.

I’ll be heading over to Vincennes in a few weeks for Festival America, where I’ll be participating in a number of events with far fancier people, and where I’ll be lucky enough to share the stage with John Irving (the guest of honour this year, on the 40th anniversary of The World According to Garp), Nathan Hill, David Chariandy, Heather O’Neill, Ivy Pochoda, Aura Xilonen, Michael Farris Smith, Baird Harper, and Dan Chaon. That’s not a bad list of authors to talk with about writing.

The festival has a Canadian focus this year, with a bunch of English and French language authors heading over. So, I think it’ll be an interesting experience talking about what is really going on over here, and especially about what is going on at a community level in the CanLit scene. I’m very happy that the organizers of the festival, and my fine editor at Albin Michel, Francis Geffard, have put together such comprehensive panels where we can really dig deep into that, and maybe get a conversation going about the actual guts of the place and people that we write about in a way that they’ve not quite read or heard before.

So, I’ll be posting some reviews and response to the book leading up to the fest, and my thoughts on it after, and perhaps during if I have the gumption. But, in the meantime, tell everyone you know in France from anytime in your life about this. I’ll high five you a number of times if you do.

Thanks everybody. And, believe in your dreams, as always…
KH