When Tom, an art house aficionado, returns to his hometown to attend a film studies conference, he discovers that his ex-girlfriend Esme has recently married their former prof, Cinny. Contact with the couple, gossip with his friend Nasim, and flirtation with a Hollywood bit player known as Lady Lex draw Tom into a noirish plot that may have Chabrol-ish consequences for his rival, and permanently distance him from his fiancée, a skilled harpsichordist named Ciana. As he navigates shifting islands of personal memory, Tom begins to wonder if life is not just a retcon (or the most contrived form of retroactive continuity). The price of admission includes an amateur opera matinee, a pub discourse on Godard-McBride Breathless Paradox, a giallo nightmare, and a hypnagogic hallucination inspired by a Tarkovsky retrospective, all threatened by the skintight spectre of the next superhero franchise.
– MARTINE DESJARDINS
“As beguiling as previews watched through a rearview mirror, this cunning tour de force holds you spellbound and breathless.”
– George Toles
“It is only in the light of memory movie screens that the things people do and say acquire the force of truth. Morse’s sentences turn delightful cartwheels, and create an atmosphere of deviltry. Amusing and poignant.”
This book was made with the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
A metafictional feast in 3 helpings, emphasizing the “double realm” that bridges reality and art, and its power to draw people into it.
