You Will Love What You Have Killed

by Kev Lambert, Donald Winkler (Translator)

Faldistoire’s grandfather thinks he’s a ghost. Sylvie’s mother reads Tarot and summons stormclouds to mete her witch’s justice. Behind his Dad of the Year demeanor, Sébastien’s father hides dark designs. It’s Croustine’s grandfather who makes the boy a pair of slippers from the dead family dog, but it’s his dad, the uncannily-named Kevin Lambert, who always seems to be nearby when tragedy strikes, and in the cemetery, under the expressionless gazes of toads, small graves are continuously being dug: Chicoutimi, Quebec, is a dangerous place for children. But these young victims of rape, accidental violence, and senseless murder keep coming back. They return to school, discover their sexualities, keep tabs on grown-up sins—and plot their apocalyptic revenge. Surreal and darkly comic, the debut novel by Kevin Lambert, one of the most celebrated and controversial writers to come out of Quebec in recent memory, takes the adult world to task—and then takes revenge.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Queer, Canada, LGBT, Audiobook, France

188 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2017

About the author

Kev Lambert, auparavant connu sous le nom de Kevin Lambert, né le 17 octobre 1992 à Montréal, est un écrivain québécois.

En 2017, il publie son premier roman, intitulé Tu aimeras ce que tu as tué, et en 2018, Querelle de Roberval, tous deux aux éditions Héliotrope. Son troisième roman, Que notre joie demeure, publié chez Héliotrope en 2022 au Québec et au Nouvel Attila en 2023 en France, est lauréat du prix Médicis 2023.

Reviews

[Etienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

216 pages de colère et de «chialage» refoulés. Pénible et vraiment peu intéressant. Le texte semble être une sorte de catharsis pour l'auteur et j'espère vraiment que cela lui a fait du bien, car cela aurait un côté positif au moins. Le style fragmenté ne m'a pas accroché, cela crée une distance et on se retrouve moins attaché et moins plonger dans le personnage et dans l'action. C'est une structure que certains auteur maîtrise bien, mais qui est malheureusement souvent raté également. Point positif, le style d'écriture, la plume de l'auteur, est tout de même intéressant considérant surtout le fait qu'il soit très jeune. Peut-être pourra produire un livre intéressant un jour, mais celui-ci est trop sombre et bien que je n'ai rien contre la noirceur, ce texte reflète a mon avis une noirceur, un point de vue, trop personnel, ce n'est pas la vision d'un peuple, ou d'une génération, mais simplement d'un jeune homme terriblement frustré. Lorsqu'on regarde les critiques certains semblent avoir beaucoup appréciés, mais malheureusement ce ne fut pas mon cas.

[Julie Malo-Sauvé · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai quitté Chicoutimi cet automne, pour m'installer à Québec après 5 ans au Royaume du Nord. Quoi de mieux, me suis-je dit, que de m'inscrire au Club de lecture Le fil rouge pour rencontrer des gens dans ma nouvelle ville!

Je ne m'attendais pas à ce que le premier roman à l'ordre du jour soit d'une violence inouïe à l'égard de Chicoutimi, justement! Une vague déferlante de haine envers son racisme latent, son immobilisme, son homophobie à peine voilée, son hypocrisie religieuse.

Les premiers chapitres m'ont donné la nausée. Je n'y voyais que violence gratuite, vocabulaire familier, personnages incongrus. Et plus j'ai avancé, mieux j'ai compris le deuxième degré, cette envie de tout détruire pour donner un nouveau souffle à un Québec figé dans ses vieilles habitudes, ses préjugés. Ça m'est arrivé, moi aussi, de pester contre la région et sa mentalité parfois sortie tout droit du siècle dernier. J'ai déjà ressenti d'énormes vagues de colère devant des traitements médiatiques hypocrites qui nourrissent l'intolérance, le racisme.

C'est un roman vraiment étonnant qui nous fait vivre des émotions contradictoires. On peut tout à la fois détester le contenu, admirer la maîtrise de la langue, réfléchir au sens porté par chacun de ses personnages et en débattre bien longtemps... Après quelques jours à décanter et une passionnante discussion au club de lecture, je dois dire que je suis vraiment impressionnée par ce premier roman de Kevin Lambert.

[Hugo St-Laurent · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

[jame✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the synopsis better than the actual novel lol

[Aude · Rating 2 out of 5]

J’ai pris beaucoup de temps à lire ce livre. Je l’ai abandonné à 3 reprises car j’avais beaucoup de difficulté à bien saisir où l’auteur voulait m’amener. Je n’ai pas compris plusieurs éléments et je n’ai toujours pas réussi à faire le lien entre tout ce qui se passe. Je trouve ça dommage car plusieurs chapitres étaient très bons et la fin m’a captivé. Je crois que ce n’était juste pas assez concret pour moi.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was dark and disturbing. I would be seriously worried about any person who claims this is their favourite book in the same way that everyone becomes concerned about the kid who loves The Catcher in the Rye.
I can see where there might have been something poetic in the writing of the French version, the English version however was startlingly blunt. The book was well written, it wasn't a bad book, it was just a deeply horrifying book. It left me wondering if we are supposed to believe and accept that death, rape, violence, and murder are just the average struggles of childhood and growing up in Chicoutimmi? I question why the author chose to name the serial killer character after himself?
The main character and his friends are extraordinarily cruel, and I feel like it was insinuating that because of what happened to the main character he became gay and sex crazed as a teen, seriously have never read a book with more references to the penis, ew. Near the end it really sounded crazy, like the manifesto a school shooter would write. Would not recommend this book.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a complicated, provocative, challenging novel.

I was drawn to this author by the title of his later novel, Querelle of Roberval. I can't imagine what this book is like in the original French, but this novel felt like a combination of Genet and South American magic realism.

The result is inventive, smart, crude, baffling, obscene, satirical, and blunt. Children die and then, — they don't come back to life, exactly, but they are not really dead either. They die and then they go back to school. They are dead but they are still there.

As with Jean Genet, plot is not linear, and not something one can really describe or understand; all one can do is go with the flow. And that is all I could do here as well.

I will read more from this young French Canadian author.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a darkly humorous novel about revenge from beyond the grave. It’s themes, as the title suggests, are love and death, and it is anything but your usual horror story. The genre, more than any other I think, is at its best when it’s boundaries are pushed wider, and this is a good example.

Narrator Faldistoire, recounts his childhood and adolescence as an oddity in the small industrial town of Chicoutimi in Quebec, where fitting in, if not a prerequisite, certainly makes life easier; go along with the norm and don’t dare to be different, but Faldistoire, gay and defiant, refuses to yield.
The premise of the book is the series of deaths of local children, in a set of horrific and gruesome accidents. A young girl playing in the snow is shredded by a snowblower, a boy falls on a pencil which becomes embedded in his skull, a father nudges his son into the cougar den at the zoo and is devoured, the list goes on..

But the children, victims of rape and senseless murder, return from their graves to live out their lives, watching the adults relentlessly. They become accepted and unquestioned, and bide their time, until they are ready to exact a sensational and cathartic revenge.

In places controversial, this is a fine example of the power of good horror writing. This is his first English translation and was published at the end of 2020. It was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Médicis and won the Marquis de Sade Prize.
I want more please..

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

“In Chicoutimi, history doesn’t happen very often, and that’s just fine when you know about all the horrible, dumb things that go on there.”

What better mine for pure comedy gold than a bitter childhood of peril and poverty? Imagine a cross between Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (as narrated by ghosts of children and teens), Lynda Barry’s Cruddy, and what a novel about childhood by William Vollmann might read like (a different sort of Royal Family but living in the same neighborhood)—all told in a voice that combines haggard cynicism with Pip-like brightness—and you’ll have an idea of the tone and attitude of You Will Love What You Have Killed. Toto, we’re not in Our Town anymore.

The book describes a core of interconnected narrators and inhabitants of Chicoutimi—a blue-color town in Quebec on the skids—focusing on events occurring during their elementary and high school days.

Chicoutimi is a town in which the school’s elementary school teachers are “imbeciles who sate their lust for power by intimidating eight-year-olds” and the school psychologist a person who “makes me copy out a hundred times that I have a problem with authority.” Children frequently come to bad ends in this town, whether by accident or design. And tragedy brings out the worst in people, as when there is gloating over special presents and favorable treatment due to the misfortunes of others one doesn’t much like (such as the death of one’s parent).

Or tragedy may be alleviated by consolation prizes of questionable taste. To wit: Kevin (as in Lambert, the author) works in the North while his son, Croustine, is reared by his father, a taxidermist. Croustine loves clambering atop his grandfather’s taxidermied animals, so that when Kevin brings home a live dog, Croustine immediately plops himself atop the dog, breaking its spine, though not killing it. The dog bites Croustine, who then kicks it across the room. After the dog is poisoned to end its misery, and to console his grandson’s bad feelings about the dog, the grandfather makes Croustine a pair of slippers from its face.

Now, the spirits of the wronged children want revenge on the town for the ills the adults have subjected them to throughout its history.

[Carm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is crazy. It’s dark, disturbing and ultra-violent... I was intrigued and uncomfortable throughout. The author is a well-known provocateur. He gave his name to one of the most repulsive characters in the book. I hope he’s ok... and in therapy. It’s racist, ableist, sexist... somehow simultaneously queer and homophobic. We’ve got rape, murder, child abuse, dead animals and taxidermied grandpas. It’s not hyperbole to say that this book needs ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. This was not vetted by a sensitivity reader. All that said, I was totally captivated. The story is nonlinear and each time a child dies, they come back. (Not in a spooky way either. Like... they’re just still there waiting to fulfill a purpose that doesn’t make itself clear until the end). That makes it a bit confusing sometimes. It also makes you ask yourself questions like, “Do ghosts really need abortions”? I digress... This book was bonkers, and I loved it. I probably also need therapy. It’s a fairly quick read so I can definitely see a reread in my future. If you like nihilism porn and have a high tolerance for the offensive... I highly recommend.

[Christopher Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly couldn't put this book down! Kept me constantly wanting to know what was happening next, and it's frank no-holds-barred description of life - and death - hit all the right notes. And while I'd formed certain assumptions about where the writer was going to wind up in the end, the ending took me surprise and uprooted my assumptions in a very surprising way!

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up at random because the cover and title suckered me in. What a mistake. It's the most disgusting, vile thing I have ever read. If I had a bonfire I would throw copies of this book on it. Unfortunately I can't remove the memory of it from my brain--I might pay money for that.

Waste of a catchy title. Just revolting, awful garbage.

[frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75
bleh. edgy just for the sake of being edgy
super fragmented and impossible to connect with any of the characters

[Mim Leclerc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une dystopie digne d’un sentiment unique et précis envers Chicout, que seul.es celleux ayant grandi là-bas peuvent partager avec l’auteure. Cette fiction a la frontière du réel propose une version complètement déjantée de la réalité qui apaise autant qu’elle ravive mon sentiment de vengeance envers ma ville natale. Je suis maintenant complètement Hook à Kev Lambert et j’ai très hâte de découvrir le reste de son oeuvre.

[Denis Carignan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbe lecture !!!!

[Seras23 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can I give negative stars? I hate this book so much. It’s the most revolting, disgusting, hideous, horrible book I’ve ever read. From the description, I thought it would be right up my alley, but no. It’s not. AT ALL. I needed to finish it for closure, but I never want to see it, touch it, read it, or hear about it ever again. So gross. Absolutely not recommended. I don't think I can even list all the trigger warnings this book needs, so if you avoid books with certain trigger warnings, just assume this book has it.

[TraceyL · Rating 4 out of 5]

A non-linear story where the Quebec setting is integral plot. It's violent and disturbing and I didn't totally understand it all, but I had a great time. Although, the narrator for the audiobook is American and there were a few Canadian terms that were pronounced wrong.

[Tianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5.
This book is so incredibly twisted, but it's also written beautifully. It serves as a good reminder of what happens when you use and abuse the children around you to your own delights.

[Nikolai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scary Potter and the Eschatological Goals of Dead Children

[Alicia]

I dnf’d this at like 15% because it was immediately ableist and disgusting. I don’t need this in my life.

[Federica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ambientato in una cittadina come tante dietro la cui facciata tradizionale e borghese ribolle un microcosmo di violenza, prevaricazione e mostruosità, il romanzo di Lambert non si fa remore a scavare nel torbido, raccontando nel dettaglio la miseria umana, il desiderio di fare del male, le pulsioni distruttive che 3 suo3 personagg3 contengono a stento. Ma è tutto troppo: troppo sensazionalistico lo stile, troppo diretta a turbare 3 lettor3 la trama, troppo frammentata la struttura del libro, un troppo che finisce per provocare l’effetto opposto e anestetizzare completamente chi legge nei confronti della brutalità e dell’orrore perpetrati da un mondo vecchio, violentemente tradizionalista e cieco, e della sua spettacolare fine.

[Sakina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ✨ | c'est trash en criss à chicout'.

c'est clauque et violent. faut être dans le mood pour le lire, mais j'ai trouvé le roman magnifiquement écrit.

(j'ai essayé de lire ce roman en 2018 (!!), j'ai dnf. et je l'ai clanché en quelques heures aujourd'hui! comme quoi, de déposer un roman et de le reprendre plus tard est tout à fait possible).

[Audrey Martel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mon voyage le plus marquant/troublant au royaume du Saguenay !

[BP Blouin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provocateur, franc-parler et violence humoristique... Une drôle de vision de la mort des enfants qui meurent trop vite...! Efficace et agréable, mais loin d’être un coup de coeur!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ouf… Kev reviendra-t-iel ever dans ce style cathartique, ou s’est-iel délesté.e de ce vibe après avoir décalisser (de) sa ville? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Salty Swift · Rating 3 out of 5]

This absurd sex-laced, ghost-filled, death-heavy comedic-thriller will either bring a shitload of tourists to Chicoutimi (Quebec) or will scare any potential visitors away.

[Olivier]

Woah!🤯

[Sheida · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the art class Madame Marcelle, lifting her cane, commands: draw your house, the idea of your house, not your house but your home, where you live, what will be your memory of it one day when you’re on your deathbed and you’ll say to yourself: this house was my home.

I’m not sure if this is a 4 star book and I’m definitely not sure if I’ll ever recommend it to anyone but I was completely enamored by the writing style here and, if simply for the promise of the author’s prose, I feel like I have to rate it high. This is an extremely dark book though and I do feel that, at times, it crossed the line into “too unnecessarily dark” so I do agree with all the critiques and the negative reviews but, for me, subjectively, this book had something special.

[Alexia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Est ce que c’est le résumé derrière qui laisse penser un roman plus léger / du moi s plus fantastique ? Je ne sais pas mais je n’ai pas accroché avec ce récit trop noir, trop rageur justement sans qu’on sache vraiment où ça mène. Même après avoir terminé ce roman, je me demande le but de certains passages, l’écriture féroce a de l’impact certes mais l’histoire m’a paru trop décousue pour que je puisse entrer dans le monde de l’auteur.

[MasterSal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief review - I still needs more time to actually think about this book. I both loved it and was completely confused by it. I loved and hated it - who knows? I was hooked though.

This was a super violent, super weird book. It’s a revenge fantasy and a mediation on violence perpetrated on children. There was so much anger in this book that I loved it. I think … maybe … who knows.

4 stars!! Maybe ….


——

Mar 2021

A weird little intriguing book by a Quebec author. 🤯🤯

Now to find it ...