Morel

Born during the Great Depression, Jean-Claude Morel is an Everyman, an ordinary Montreal construction worker who has built the city with his own hands, digging its metro, creating islands, and weaving expressways through the downtown core. But the progress has come at a cost: neighbourhoods have been razed, streets wiped off the map, and the Morel family expropriated.

Teeming with life, Morel uncovers a story of Montreal that has been buried under years of glitzy urban renewal and modernization. This intricately constructed literary novel is a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, a monument to a city, and a toast to days gone by.

AUTHOR

Melissa Bull

Melissa Bull is a writer, editor and translator based in Montreal. Her writing has been featured in Event, Matrix, Lemon Hound, Broken Pencil, The Montreal Review of Books, Playboy, and Maisonneuve. She has translated such authors as Nelly Arcan, Kim Thuy, Évelyne de la Chenlière, Raymond Bock, Alexandre Soublière, and Maude Smith Gagnon for various publications. Melissa has a BA in Creative Writing from Concordia University and is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She is the 2013 winner of CBC’s Hyperlocal Award, and her first collection of poetry, Rue, was published in 2015.

Reviews

“An astounding book . . . a mini epic of an ordinary man, and a time capsule of post-war Montreal with all its problems, economic, political,and environmental. I highly recommend it.” James Fisher, Founding Editor of The Miramichi Reader

“One of the greatest Quebec novelists and short story writers of our time.” Lettres québécoises2022

“The author’s language is as precise as the actions he describes, as rich as the demons that trouble Morel, as bustling as the neighborhood that is swallowed up. And it turns out to be unexpectedly beautiful: a deeply buried gold nugget, freshly dug out, covered in earth, that suddenly starts to gleam.” (Josée Boileau, Le Journal de Montréal)

“A novel both monumental and ethereal.” (Philippe Manevy, Lettres québécoises)

“It makes brilliant use of language, rides roughshod over clichés about the Grande Noirceur, and delves deep into working-class alienation, with an incredible appetite for manual labour and all things homo faber. […] Morel is the most accomplished and liveliest working-class saga you”ll have the pleasure of reading this year.” (Olivier Boisvert, Librairie Gallimard)

Finalist

Prix des libraires
Prix littéraire des collégiens
Grand Prix du livre de Montréal
Prix Senghor
Rendez-vous du premier roman

“Maxime Raymond Bock affirms, with Morel, his unique signature of erudition and humanity.” Mario Cloutier, La Presse

About Bock’s short story collection Atavisms

“Bock’s language crackles with the energy of a Québécois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic.” Pasha Malla, The New Yorker

“Bock creates an impressive diversity of voices.” Andrew Irwin, The Times Literary Supplement