What do you think?
Rate this book
Mouthquake
Montreal, 1979. A boy's speech starts to fracture along with the cement of le Stade olympique. Do they share a fault line? Daniel Allen Cox's unconventional fourth novel tells the story of a boy with a stutter who grows up and uses sound to remember the past. A coming-of-age tale that telescopes through time like an amnesiac memoir, Mouthquake finds its strange beat in subliminal messages hidden in skipping records, in the stutters of celebrities, and in the wisdom of The Grand Antonio, a suspicious mystic who helps the narrator unlock the secret to his speech. This is a loudly exclaimed book of innuendo, rumours, and the tangled barbs of repressed memory that How do you handle a troubling past event that behaves like a barely audible whisper? Written with a poetic bravado and in a structure that mimics a stutter, the elegiac Mouthquake is speech therapy for the the signal is perverted and the sounds are thrilling. Includes an afterword by Sarah Schulman, author of Rat Bohemia and The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination. Daniel Allen Cox is the author of Shuck, Krakow Melt (both Lambda Award finalists), and Basement of Wolves . He also co-wrote Bruce LaBruce's film Gerontophilia , released in the US in 2015.
207 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2015
2 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Allen Cox
10 books35 followersDaniel Allen Cox's essays appear or are forthcoming in Electric Literature, The Malahat Review, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is the author of four novels published by Arsenal Pulp Press. Daniel lives in Tiotia:ke/Montréal and is past president of the Quebec Writers' Federation. He is represented by Akin Akinwumi at Willenfield Literary Agency.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 6, 2015
another marvelous work by one of my favourite contemporary writers & a dear friend. elements of fairy tale, fable. a series of moments in the life of a boy who stutters & encounters various kindreds in Montreal. somehow evocative to me of Marie-Claire Blais' La Belle Bête. poetic. insightful. how language distorts, the difficulty of expression. provocative & sensual. delightfully humorous. a character with an on going story. i hope we see him again.
part of the ongoing narrative of dystopian Montreal from contemporary writers such as Daniel, Heather O'Neill...
part of the ongoing narrative of dystopian Montreal from contemporary writers such as Daniel, Heather O'Neill...
July 12, 2020
I actually give this book 3.5 stars. It’s interesting “modern” literature meaning it jumps all over the place in essentially chapters that don’t go together in a stream of consciousness sort of way. Other than that it’s ok. I feel like perhaps I’m not enough of an artist to appreciate what the author was trying to do. In some of the lucid parts it was a good story.
March 4, 2017
The texture of Montreal is here, at least for me. That artsy, hip, otherness that you feel hearing the lyrical Quebecoise french. And feeling the exotic aesthetic that wraps you up in fur, leather and long scarfs in winter and wild theatrical costumes in summer. This book is theatrical also. Flights of fancy that are almost allegorical, circus characters who console and torture; strangeness is everywhere and reality weaves in and out, and when it does seem to be solid there is always a mist of uncertainty at the edges.
There is a direction - more a journey, or quest maybe - taken by the youth as he works on his past memories and his present relationships. He defends his damaged interface to the world aggressively until he finds ultimately that it is his pain that connects him most truly to the pain of others. He is complex and kinky. He is caring and romantic. He is cruel and selfish. All the things a teenager experiences. Except perhaps, in this tale, with exceptional intensity.
Words are often lyrical and often coarse. Some phrases are so clever and engaging, they stop you and require reflection. The asides and scenes are transfixing and often provocative. Some of it feels like poetry some of it feels like pornography. I do not think I have ever read such strangeness made beautiful.
There is a direction - more a journey, or quest maybe - taken by the youth as he works on his past memories and his present relationships. He defends his damaged interface to the world aggressively until he finds ultimately that it is his pain that connects him most truly to the pain of others. He is complex and kinky. He is caring and romantic. He is cruel and selfish. All the things a teenager experiences. Except perhaps, in this tale, with exceptional intensity.
Words are often lyrical and often coarse. Some phrases are so clever and engaging, they stop you and require reflection. The asides and scenes are transfixing and often provocative. Some of it feels like poetry some of it feels like pornography. I do not think I have ever read such strangeness made beautiful.
August 29, 2022
I have enjoyed the author's previous novels immensely. He is a talented and very imaginative and funny writer. But, somehow this novel didn't work for me in the same way as his others. This could be the fault of the novel, it could be my growing tired of a style that is beginning to loose it's freshness. I don't know but I still would recommend the book and it stays on my shelf and one day I will reread it and see if I should alter this review.
July 2, 2018
I really wanted to like this book.
October 21, 2015
Our conversations are magical. Stutterer and deaf person, we have such interesting ways of communicating. We meet somewhere in the middle of the other’s irregular speech. He lipreads my thoughts through a stutter, and I read his through his slur. When we speak to each other, Eric stares at my mouth, and I stare at his hands. I don’t understand sign language so he doesn’t sign to me, but his fingers still try to decode what he’s saying. He can’t help it.
He places his hands on my neck to feel the vibrations. Sometimes I think he knows what I’m going to say a few seconds before it comes out. And sometimes, maybe even before I know what I’m going to say. I place my hands on his sternum, not to feel the vibration, but to feel the pain in his sighs and what happens between words. He’s a breathy one. Having a conversation with him engages so much of our bodies. It’s so sexual. I think the real reason we talk is to have an excuse to fondle each other. We’re real pervs that way. I wonder if I’d love Eric as much if he were a hearing person. And I wonder if he wonders the same about my speech.
***
Mouthquake, Daniel Allen Cox’s fourth novel, is very much about memory and those locked away; and is itself, in both writing and structure, a bit like a memory—fractured and disseminated in uneven shards like a breadcrumb ouroboros.
Taking place in Montréal in the 80s and 90s, the novel follows our protagonist, belaboured by a stutter, as he, imagining himself a German Shepherd a la The Littlest Hobo, befriends a mysterious local figure—the Grand Antonio, a large, woolly mammoth of a man who pulls buses with his hair and sells postcards of himself alongside such luminaries as Dean Martin, Carly Simon, Johnny Carson, and even, mysteriously, Marilyn Monroe to unsuspecting passers-by.
Immediately, Cox’s novel blurs the line between realities with surreal, often poetic descriptors—in sharp contrast to its stuttering protagonist. For example, when referencing the Grand Antonio:
“He laid a hand on my head, which made me still. When he patted my toque, it felt like I was being bashed by a warm, raw steak. When he laughed, it sounded like the engine of a bus in trouble.”
The extensive, colourful language used throughout syncs with the narrator’s experiences as a stuttering child, one who learns to see the world more cohesively through sound and music. In the novel’s second and strongest section, taking place in the 1990s, he is introduced to his other half—a deaf young man named Eric. Together they discover different modes of communication as the narrator further explores the correlation between his experiences, his sexual appetite, and different forms of physical punishment and how it all relates to the construction of his identity.
I’ll be honest, I struggled with this book. I’ve enjoyed Cox’s work in the past, especially the incendiary and awesome Krakow Melt; however, as I read, I discovered that the narrative of this book simply wasn’t sticking with me. I found myself wanting more from Mouthquake’s young narrator than the book seemed willing to provide.
As beautiful as much of Cox’s language is, it comes in this instance at the expense of its characters—ultimately, I thought the narrator somewhat impenetrable, and as a result the novel had a difficult time maintaining my interest. I’ll readily admit that part of this, I think, has to do the perhaps unfair expectation that the concept introduced near the novel’s close, that people are songs in and of themselves, would resonate more deeply than it does. Instead it feels like a rather brilliant idea not successfully executed throughout. In other words, given the premise, I think I expected more of a synaesthetic approach to theme and identity.
It’s a strange thing to be reviewing a book, knowing that there is quality to its writing and to the story being told, but having been unable to connect to it—and, if I’m honest, feeling as if there was more attention paid to its construction of a sense of time and place than to developing its characters or what links them to one another. In the end, while I appreciate that each of Cox’s novels (of which I’ve read three) feel radically different from one another, Mouthquake washed over me with unfortunately little impact. I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t find anything in which to sink my teeth.
He places his hands on my neck to feel the vibrations. Sometimes I think he knows what I’m going to say a few seconds before it comes out. And sometimes, maybe even before I know what I’m going to say. I place my hands on his sternum, not to feel the vibration, but to feel the pain in his sighs and what happens between words. He’s a breathy one. Having a conversation with him engages so much of our bodies. It’s so sexual. I think the real reason we talk is to have an excuse to fondle each other. We’re real pervs that way. I wonder if I’d love Eric as much if he were a hearing person. And I wonder if he wonders the same about my speech.
***
Mouthquake, Daniel Allen Cox’s fourth novel, is very much about memory and those locked away; and is itself, in both writing and structure, a bit like a memory—fractured and disseminated in uneven shards like a breadcrumb ouroboros.
Taking place in Montréal in the 80s and 90s, the novel follows our protagonist, belaboured by a stutter, as he, imagining himself a German Shepherd a la The Littlest Hobo, befriends a mysterious local figure—the Grand Antonio, a large, woolly mammoth of a man who pulls buses with his hair and sells postcards of himself alongside such luminaries as Dean Martin, Carly Simon, Johnny Carson, and even, mysteriously, Marilyn Monroe to unsuspecting passers-by.
Immediately, Cox’s novel blurs the line between realities with surreal, often poetic descriptors—in sharp contrast to its stuttering protagonist. For example, when referencing the Grand Antonio:
“He laid a hand on my head, which made me still. When he patted my toque, it felt like I was being bashed by a warm, raw steak. When he laughed, it sounded like the engine of a bus in trouble.”
The extensive, colourful language used throughout syncs with the narrator’s experiences as a stuttering child, one who learns to see the world more cohesively through sound and music. In the novel’s second and strongest section, taking place in the 1990s, he is introduced to his other half—a deaf young man named Eric. Together they discover different modes of communication as the narrator further explores the correlation between his experiences, his sexual appetite, and different forms of physical punishment and how it all relates to the construction of his identity.
I’ll be honest, I struggled with this book. I’ve enjoyed Cox’s work in the past, especially the incendiary and awesome Krakow Melt; however, as I read, I discovered that the narrative of this book simply wasn’t sticking with me. I found myself wanting more from Mouthquake’s young narrator than the book seemed willing to provide.
As beautiful as much of Cox’s language is, it comes in this instance at the expense of its characters—ultimately, I thought the narrator somewhat impenetrable, and as a result the novel had a difficult time maintaining my interest. I’ll readily admit that part of this, I think, has to do the perhaps unfair expectation that the concept introduced near the novel’s close, that people are songs in and of themselves, would resonate more deeply than it does. Instead it feels like a rather brilliant idea not successfully executed throughout. In other words, given the premise, I think I expected more of a synaesthetic approach to theme and identity.
It’s a strange thing to be reviewing a book, knowing that there is quality to its writing and to the story being told, but having been unable to connect to it—and, if I’m honest, feeling as if there was more attention paid to its construction of a sense of time and place than to developing its characters or what links them to one another. In the end, while I appreciate that each of Cox’s novels (of which I’ve read three) feel radically different from one another, Mouthquake washed over me with unfortunately little impact. I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t find anything in which to sink my teeth.
January 1, 2016
I adore Daniel.
I was also very affected by the leaving of The Littlest Hobo, a Canadian TV show where a dog goes from place to place helping people and then leaves. Where was he going? Where would he sleep? Food? Safety? I cried crocodile tears about the welfare of this fictional dog. I thought I was alone in this. Daniel's description of his similiar reaction is awesome.
I read his writing like I eat cheesecake; in thin slices, slow and with decadence.
Part of the Canadian pride for sure. Top of my list to purchase!
I was also very affected by the leaving of The Littlest Hobo, a Canadian TV show where a dog goes from place to place helping people and then leaves. Where was he going? Where would he sleep? Food? Safety? I cried crocodile tears about the welfare of this fictional dog. I thought I was alone in this. Daniel's description of his similiar reaction is awesome.
I read his writing like I eat cheesecake; in thin slices, slow and with decadence.
Part of the Canadian pride for sure. Top of my list to purchase!
January 21, 2016
Weird !
I really did not expect so many "in your face" homosexual or any kind of sexual references.
Also, what does he expect people who don't know french to do with all those lines, verses? A verse here, a chapter title there, etc. It must really ruin a read to have to keep Google translate open while reading.
I really did not expect so many "in your face" homosexual or any kind of sexual references.
Also, what does he expect people who don't know french to do with all those lines, verses? A verse here, a chapter title there, etc. It must really ruin a read to have to keep Google translate open while reading.
June 17, 2016
This wonderful novel is about several things, but it is most importantly about stuttering. There has been nothing in English this profound about a stammer since Melville's "Billy Budd." I cannot recommend it more highly.
February 6, 2016
Ok, too much gimmick. In first 50 pages a pedophile and the stutterer.
April 13, 2016
Meh.
Read
January 11, 2016Stuttering and mad-sex compulsion
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews