Hair for Men

by Michelle Winters

The second novel by Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Michelle Winters teems with hot towel shaves and the steady thrum of female rage. Spurred by adolescent trauma, Louise adopts a life of hardcore punk violence until she stumbles into a job at a mysterious men’s hair salon, where her unique relationship with her clientele shows her a more perfect world―or so it seems. When that world is overturned, she flees to a marina on the East Coast, where she lives free from reminders of her past―except the duffle-bagged ones she jettisons nightly in a forsaken cove. But on the day of the Tragically Hip’s 2016 farewell performance in Kingston, a man surfaces from the Bay of Fundy, rousing long-dormant urges and giving Louise an unexpected the chance to make things right. Funny, warm, and filled with dread,  Hair for Men  is a subversive exploration of gender, forgiveness, and chucking convention.

Genres: Canada, Fiction, Feminism, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

216 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2024

Reviews

[Cori · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's time that I accept that Giller Prize panelists and I have very different taste in books

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

|| HAIR FOR MEN ||
#gifted @houseofanansi
•
I loved this book! It was funny and dark as it explores gender, the patriarchy, forgiveness, and female rage. I loved the Eastern Canadian setting too. It had a heavy storyline but was so endearing, and such great characters. I love a book that lands around the 200 page mark but in this case I almost could have gone longer. I dont want to say to much about this one as I think it's a good one to go into without knowing much. But it is a very moving and smartly done book. Highly reccomend!

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[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I perused the Globe & Mail’s top 100 books of 2024 list this morning, I switched between my library app and the list, placing holds. And then picked up too many holds from the library, cracking this one open, and devouring it. There were so many personal connections for me in the beautiful book. Toronto, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy, and of course, The Hip.
I feel ripped apart and breathless.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good lit fic book so I was looking forward to reading HAIR FOR MEN by Michelle Winters and I really enjoyed it! This novel is about a woman, Louise, who begins working at a mysterious men’s hair salon and deals with trauma from her past. I really liked the exploration of gender, misogyny, and expectations. I liked how surprising this novel was as Louise encounters interesting characters and situations. Winters is also a translator and I have her translation Kiss the Undertow by Marie-Hélène Larochelle in my TBR so I’m really looking forward to reading that too!

Thank you to House of Anansi for my gifted review copy!

[erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

hair for men is very well written, easy to read, but it was just not enough for me. I didn’t feel drawn to the main character at all, and frankly new this the moment she started acting out and I began judging her…

I always want to love my characters and just couldn’t in this case. It’s a nice read if you are from Toronto, and enjoy seeing references to the city.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this was a delicious little read for me.
The main character, Louise, takes us from simple childhood to early adolescence where something happens to bring forth her seething female rage. This rage simmers throughout the book, and although Louise learns to contain it, it's always very close to the surface. The plot moves the reader from Southern Ontario to the Bay of Fundy, with ripples of the Tragically Hip always running underneath. When Gord Downie plays his last concert, Louise also plays out her last bit of rage and allows herself to find comfort.

I loved the characters, some who seemed familiar. Every character seemed to harbour something within which ends up disappointing Louise. I also loved Louise and raged for her.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would when I began my reading of it. 3.5 stars.

[Enid Wray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that was different.

Confessions straight off the top:

I wasn’t a fan of her debut I Am A Truck;
I never listened to The Tragically Hip - I wouldn’t know a song by them if I heard it
I only know Gord Downie for The Secret Path;
I wasn’t living in Canada when they formed the band, and I had no time for the music scene when I did eventually get back to Canada;
Neither am I an Alannis Morissette fan; and
Neither did I ever watch Twin Peaks or see the movie Eraserhead.

This matters because this title has a very ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ element to it - all tied to the above.

It is part homage - and if you don’t know or don’t care about those whom the homage is meant to honour, well then, it’s pretty pointless.
With the exception of the reference to Eraserhead, they all come a little ways into the book.

I started out quite liking this - because it was refreshingly different. I liked it - until I didn’t.

I liked what felt like a fresh take on coming-of-age, dealing with sexual assault (or not as the case actually is), her female rage, and her acting out when she couldn’t process her grief.

Some of the messaging is pretty profound, like:

P36. “I didn’t have the skills to work through sadness or regret, but I could wield my own suffering against them, embedding the neglected core of my grief like a stone in my gullet”

P96. “… forgiving was euphoric… releasing the malice I’d carried lifted such a weight from my mind and heart… this was considered divine”

But once she connects with the folks at Hair for Men - well, it just gets weird and she starts to lose me. Then Lou moves to the East Coast, and I’m back with it again - until I’m not.

And that fundamentally is the problem here - this is all over the place, and there is both too much and too little simultaneously, clocking in at only 220 pages all in on my digital arc.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital copy. Apologies for the delay in getting this post up.

[Amy Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aimless. Full of the protagonist’s rambling explanations and little to no plot, resolution, or character growth.

[Karen B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not think twice, read this book!

One of those books early on you’re already anxious about it ending. As predicted, I wanted more. The characters are well developed, reminiscent and of people you probably knew, but maybe didn’t think about from these angles. The feminism, but not too much, the Canadiana, but not too much, the story telling, all combined to perfection. 6 stars on this scale.

[Anne Farrer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a 2.5 for me. This had promise; dark, rebellious, a strong female lead simmering with rage, but it just floundered as a novel. Limited plot, overreaching in coincidence to make her characters meet again, and under reaching in resolution of her own feelings. She does however perfectly capture how she turns her humiliation from the assault into rage, into armor.

[Michi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up this one after having enjoyed her debut novel so much. I really enjoyed this one at first; actually, I was so hooked and could not put the book down, then past the midway point, the story kind of fell apart.

As usual, Michelle's writing is very plot driven and theme-focused; her control of language and imagery is incredible, immersing the audience into the story, piquing our interests, and making us yearn for answers (she would be a great mystery writer!). However, while her characters are well written at the beginning, the more the plot reveals itself, the less the characters had as they remained unchanged while time went on and the world around them changed. By the end, I felt like Louise's fixation on Mitch and all her interactions with men kept her too one dimensional; she had been through so much and grown so much, yet she barely had really matured.

The best part about this book was her journey with Hair for Men salon. The journey Michelle took us on with Louise learning about the men she worked with and for was so intriguing; it was promising us the complexity she was developing, but it actually never happened. It was weird how she just pulled the Hair for Men salon plot out from under our feet like that, but I get that Louise was in our situation as well.

Still, what disturbed me the imbalance: Louise's world was all Hair for Men post school, I mean, everyone she mentioned were working at or getting services from Hair for Men; once she left, there was no one outside of Hair for Men to continue her journey with her. The audience would be left wondering, she made a lot of money, what was her life like when she was finished with her shift, what did her friends or families say or do to help her move on from Hair for Men, or if she had no one, how exactly did she navigate life alone? The post-salon phase was less interesting, but at least, she was more believable with a life.

Anyway, I still recommend people give this a read. I enjoy Michelle's writing a lot but I beg for some balance and complex characters next time.

[ashley rutkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

yes female rage

[Annie • willyoubemybookfriend]

freaky in a not so cute way

[Stephanie AM · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5–loved the female rage in this but the pacing was a little off for me.

[Maddy Beaumont · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn’t about the storyline (slightly underwhelming) it was about the message. This book is important. Feminism & taking care of boys, with space and respect to nurture them through a society designed to spit them out as monsters instead of men. It focuses on the alienation between men and women through growth and sexualisation. Worth the read, for any gender and age.

[Mark Medland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but wound up frustrated and confused. So much potential but so little follow through.

[Deanna Laidler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing- a punk rock feminist novel centered around pain, a desire to find yourself, and self-discovery. It was so good I read it in one sitting.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The blurb called this “funny, warm and filled with dread” and that’s one time (out of an infinite many blurbs that have lied to me over the years) that the description is pretty accurate. The book starts slowly, with the prerequisite misunderstood teen acting out after the prerequisite humiliation at the hands of a pair of oafish boys, but things pick up quickly after Louise - Lou - discovers, or at least falls into, her niche and her music and her place. I’m still not sure if I actually liked Lou, or if I even understand the character, and her taste in music is mostly not mine, but she is surely one to root for and the comeuppance scene (you’ll get the relevance of that word when you get there) is one to cherish. Maybe this would make a better Canadian movie. 3 1/2 stars

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably a 3.5-4. Some very interesting things.... interesting indeed. The ending throws me a little bit because it feels so thrown in for the sake of throwing it in (not the ending sentence but the heart attack itself).

[Melanie Neault · Rating 2 out of 5]

This writing style of this book reminded me of “lullabies for little criminals”. In that sense, I liked it- but I found I loss interest halfway through and it was hard to feel connected to the storyline and development of the main character.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michelle Winters was interviewed about the novel and mentioned that the epigraph was almost “Indelible in the hippocampus is the sound of laughter.” That was what Christine Blasey Ford said when asked what she remembered from the sexual assault committed by Brett Kavanaugh during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for his nomination to the Supreme Court. That she could still so clearly hear that laughter haunted Winters.

Our protagonist Louise still hears that laughter and can never shake the shame and anger that sits in her bones after her own high school humiliation. She finds solace in the punk scene and the words of Henry Rollins whose quote "my optimism wears heavy boots and is loud" which instead became the epigraph Winters would eventually use.

And while it is the story of Louise becoming a barber at Hair for Men before fleeing to the East Coast to work a small marina where she finds herself on the day of the Tragically Hip's 2016 farewell performance — it is also an examination of a culture that needs better models for its men.

There is Louise travelling with her charismatic father who sold shampoo to the fawning and flirtatious stylists with a wink and some knowing banter, leaving each salon wiping lipstick from his cheeks. At Hair for Men, Louise is part of a cadre of women working a luxurious salon. There the women create a safe and welcoming space where the male clientele can open up and share in a way they might not be able to at home or with their friends. At the marina, Louise sees how a shrugging noncommittal dismissal of a young boy creates a vacuum where ugly things can begin to fester.

And that boy from high school. What does it mean to apologize for the specific action yet still hold to the entitlement that it sprung from. What happens when he becomes a father to a little girl? The notion "boys will be boys" abdicates any responsibility to something better, to submit to a patriarchal status quo that leaves men ill equipped to truly examine their internal landscape.

And there is Gord Downie backstage the night of the Tragically Hip's final show. He is in a silver suit and flat-topped white hat. Amidst the roar of the crowds outside, he turns to bandmate Rob Baker, taking his face in both hands to kiss him gently on the lips. The band in turn showing clear, naked affection for each so at odds with what we think of from a rock band, from men.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quirky piece of Fundy Feminist Fiction, which was occasionally brilliant but inconsistent. Michelle Winters's writing is funny, weird and intensely Gen X. For better or worse, she relies heavily on references and pays little heed to whether her readers would know or care about these things.

For instance, in "Hair for Men" I found the constant references to Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip tiresome and slightly alienating, even if I do have a vague awareness of their cultural footprint. The novel's title probably should have referenced The Hip rather than hair, because it's a more of a meaningful throughline in this novel than the "Hair for Men" sideplot.

I made a playlist of all the music the characters listen to in "I am a Truck" and you could probably do the same thing in "Hair for Men". In a way, this entire novel is structured around the protagonist's evolving/complicated relationship with the Tragically Hip's music (and by extension masculinity) across multiple decades. Sometimes she hates the Hip (and Men), sometimes she loves them.

This intense polarity never really gets resolved, but Winters doesn't typically try to "resolve" her characters' issues, or get to the bottom of them. She prefers instead to depict her protagonists lashing out wildly against their unconscious impulses, like a swimmer kicking out blindly when something slimy things brushes their leg. I don't personally find that satisfying to read, but I suspect Winters feels that approach is more true to life. As the Commodore says to Louise (by way of quoting Gord Downie/Hugh Maclennan):

“There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.”

[Alison Gadsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can men really change?

Inspired by bell hooks THE WILL TO CHANGE, Constance, a character in Michelle Winters’ novel opens a private hair salon (HAIR FOR MEN) that services men in what appears to be a—too good to be true—space that doesn’t include any extra services.

A grieving Louise is cutting hair at a franchise-style budget salon carrying the burden of an awful assault by two teenaged boys, when Constance finds her and hires her to work at her special salon in an industrial park in Mississauga. The fantasies that flicker in Louise's mind sustain her and distract her perhaps from the grief of losing her parents. As she imagines the violent deaths of the two boys in high school who ruined her to touch, who ruined her to trust men, one day one of those tormentors walks into Hair for Men. It is an opportunity to enact revenge, but things turn out surprisingly different. It can’t be this easy.

Michelle Winters has written a uniquely gorgeous, intimate and emotional exploration of female rage. Nothing is what it seems to be, and everything is what you’d expect, and nothing is that easy, in HAIR FOR MEN. A particularly great character is Grace, who sells a special talent on an Only Fans-type site, and who offers us a bit of hope. What men define as “messing around” is a violence women carry in their bodies for their entire lives—like a dead body zipped into a duffel bag. And Winters asks, what are women to do with this burden, when we still focus so much on teaching women how to be in this “man’s world”, when we should actually be focusing on teaching men how to be?

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will start by saying this book was picked entirely because of the cover. Once I picked it up and read the synopsis and saw the Tragically Hip referenced I was sold.

The story was captivating in a strange and unexpected way. The Canadian references made it feel familiar and somewhat personal.

Louise, the main character, is around my age, which made her journey all the more relatable. The story deals with trauma, healing, and the unexpected ways we find connection and chosen family. It also weaves in strong feminist themes as it moves through the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond—exploring what it really means to be a woman in a world that keeps trying to define you.

The part that that really stood out was the narrative of the characters watching The Tragically Hip’s final concert. It was written well and captured the bittersweet feeling every Canadian remembers from that night.

What I didn’t love—and honestly found frustrating—were the excessively long chapters. Even though they were logically divided by time in Louise’s life, they often dragged and took away from the flow of the story.

Overall, it’s a great read with some very relatable Canadian moments - even with the long chapters.

[Cybercrone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea how to categorize this book, except as a good and unusual read.
The story centres around Lou(ise) who has some significant trauma inflicted on her by a school mate. She begins having nightmares about having gym bags full of dead bodies she's getting rid of.
After she graduates she trains as a barber, gets a really wonderful job and almost ends up in jail.
That causes her to leave the country. The only complaint I have with the story is this part as the book reads as if she left work, got on a plane and went. No explanation about what she did with her home, her car, her parents.
During the time told about in the book she meets her teenaged sexual harasser twice more and that's how the story evolves.
I can't place the book in a category because it has all the feels, is not nearly as grim as it sounds here, and is really a fine read. And I know I'm showing it as 'women' listed, but I hope men will read it too. It would be very instructive along with all the other things.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book, which is another title that arrived in my life at the exact right time. After she experiences a tragedy in her life at a relatively young age, Louise starts working at a men’s hair salon and develops a rapport with her clients. Suddenly she is forced to flee the situation and leaves to work with boats in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Her new boss makes her learn how to sail with the Flying Juniors program, which is like the youth who learn to sail near my aunt and uncle’s home in Baddeck. Interestingly, Louise develops more friendships with men than women in this book, which makes her more intriguing. A great, Canadian read, especially in celebration of the band The Tragically Hip.

[Kerri Boland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this book shone - I loved the hair salon. I loved the punk rock shows. I did not love what happens to Lou's parents and the aftermath for her... I needed more from that scene. I don't like it when an author doesn't want to do the heavy work of getting through the hard times, and I feel like it's a cop out to ignore them. Mitch pissed me off, as he was supposed to, but I felt like he needed to be more rounded out as well - but maybe that's just how a large percentage of the population is... I'm excited to talk about this at book club, especially the beginning part about having (and being) a challenging teenager. Shows again how important it is to have a variety of safe adults in your life who notice when everything about you changes!!

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good book, written with warmth, humor and wisdom. The book starts as a shy young woman has a profoundly disturbing encounter that sounds anecdotal and is perhaps too common when men disrespect a woman’s body. This affects the rest of her life and her choices as she lives with hurt and anger towards men, but also a contrasting love of her father. “I didn’t have the skills to work through sadness or regret, but I could wield my own suffering against them, embedding the neglected core of my grief like a stone in my gullet.”

Th story provides some surprising and inventive locales as the protagonist’s life takes sharp turns. The interweaving of dreams provides a sense of her interior landscape and mental health. Recommended.

[Enid G · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's well-written and I enjoyed how the author dealt with themes such as female rage, sexual assault, family, and coming of age. The story itself, however, had way too much going on and was too unbelievable and full of unlikely coincidences. Things seemed to happen simply because the author wanted them to; not because they made sense (the first example is when the parents went to Cape Breton without their teenage daughter, then it just goes on from there). I also didn't always understand all of the Tragically Hip references. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the read overall. It was unexpected and fun and oddly relatable at times.