The Second Substance

by Anne Lardeux

Squatters at a rural gas station try to find freedom and build something new on the ashes of our petrocivilization in this sensual novel.

A community of outsiders takes over an abandoned gas station. They spend their days ripping up asphalt, drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and wandering through woods and towns in search of new ways of living. People come and go: a charismatic landscaper, Italian anarchists, a policewoman, travellers. A teenager drifts into homelessness. And The Girl With No Name keeps a journal of her attempts to meet new people and sleep with them, sex that is “not a sideline” but the motivating force in a story she is struggling to understand.

Neighbors grow hostile. An investigation threatens the community. Tension builds between the surface violence of “normal life” and the attempt of these outsiders to experience freedom and build something new on the ashes of our oil-addicted society.

With a character borrowed from Agnès Varda’s Vagabond and inspiration taken from Anne Boyer’s writings, Anne Lardeux’s highly original debut assembles elements of poetry, film, and visual arts into an exuberant choral novel, an ode to the daughters of fire and to the poetry of the body. Often funny, sometimes raunchy, consistently surprising, never flinching, The Second Substance heralds an important new voice in Quebec literature.

Genres: Dystopia, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

Published June 21, 2022

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans]

I have a high tolerance for arty-fartiness, and for pretentiousness - I'm always very careful about using the term 'pretentious', as it gets used a bit too easily. I like weird books. I'm fine with fragmented novels.

This book is pretentious through and through, and it is terrible. It's all over the place, full of completely uninteresting characters, all trundling their own little uninteresting paths through the book.

Avoid.

(Thanks to Coach House Books for providing a review copy through Edelweiss)

[Sabrina Blais]

J'ai de la difficulté à bien saisir l'essence de ce livre. J'ai d'abord beaucoup aimé le style d'écriture de l'auteure, mais je trouve que l'histoire s'en allait dans plusieurs directions et était par moment difficile à suivre. Malgré tout, le livre se lit très facilement.

[Emma]

3.5 "Les récits de Gil sont impossibles à suivre selon la logique narrative qui noue ensemble des temps et des espaces. J'apprends à les recevoir comme ils viennent, sans essayer de les organiser en unités continues. Ils tracent des déambulations qui ne finissent jamais mais nomment les paysages au fil de leur avancée."

Voici l'essence de ce livre parfois déroutant et pourtant fluide à lire; il faut accepter la proposition telle quelle, accepter de ne pas tout comprendre et se concentrer plutôt sur les impressions qui se dégagent du récit.

Plusieurs phrases sont de vraies perles: mention spéciale à la plume de l'auteure qui sort de l'ordinaire et est parfaitement maîtrisée !

[Valérie Forgues]

"C'est la fin de son shift, elle veut une bière elle veut quitter quand arrive des urgences un drôle de moineau. Une qui flotte plus qu'elle encore dans sa jaquette. Elle jauge l'animal exsangue qu'on pourrait croire à sa fin, mais quelque chose l'attrape dans son souffle brûlant, la vie qui bat juste de quoi survivre, son obstination."

[Paige Johnson]

*Free Edel Wiess copy* 2.4/5 This prose is like desert sand: fast-whipped to where it’s hard to get your footing in the turmoil. All we know for sure is there’s the makings of a war or uprising (real or metaphorical or multiple) that have made the two girls very different in age, origin, and temperament into runaways. It’s hard to say the geography or time period, reminding of the chaos of The Road. If this was accompanied by art (still, film, or animated) I would appreciate it more because I could be concrete in my assumptions of the actions.

Though this author may be talented with grave images, the work is inaccessible in its vagueness. (Perhaps partly because it’s translated from French, I heard?) It makes it seem like there are too many characters and it’s hard to tell anybody’s relation, if they are at all. This book’s summary begins sounding way too benign for the transient, dour vibe. Things make little sense still 1/3 through.

The highlights of this book are simply images: kids living in an abandoned gas station, a carnival crowd attacking a girl in a phone booth, the flashes of lecherous girls. The perspective of a female cop is interesting w/ her desire to make men flinch. As is the careless, blind father, and wannabe nudist girl. It’s just not enough to string together a coherent story or my interest.

[Kate]

'We're all afraid, and this is our solidarity. Or our substance.' ~pg53
•
The Second Substance, debut novely by Canadian author Anne Lardeux wonderfully translated by Pablo Strauss follows a group of squatters living an unconventional lifestyle trying to separate themselves from late capitalist society.

Written in different styles, and structured in fragmented, journal like entries, we weave in and out of these entries, getting glimpses of the characters that make up this group, and their lifestyle of sex, drugs and freedom.

This novel surprised me! It wasn't what I expected, although to be fair I dont know exactly what I expected. It's one that falls outside the box. For me it was an expression of longing in several forms but also of language. Told in fluid, poetic prose, this is raw, and sexual and I cant quite find the right words now but this one intrigues me and I'm still thinking about it. Many thanks to @coachhousebooks for the gifted copy.

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[Roz]

An interesting novel of fragments, scenes, and snapshots of the life of several people who live in an abandoned gas station in rural Quebec. It’s told in a collage kind of way - diary entries, scenes from a movie, fragments told from different perspectives. It builds to a climax, in both senses of that word: this is a novel where sex is never far from the surface and it permeates even the narrator’s life.

Does it quite work? Maybe - it did somewhat for me, coming together in a non-traditional kind of narrative, but I can’t help feeling that what Lardeux was going for was something beyond words, beyond language. Maybe that’s why she chose such a strange, unconventional way of telling the story of several unconventional people living their unconventional lives. It’s not exactly a success, but it’s the kind of attempt that’s worth reading for the effort and lengths it goes to.

[Emily Wright]

For most of this read it was as though I was in a freefall waiting to grab onto the point or the quest. But then it all slipped into place. Litererary dynamic and raunchy all at the same time.

[Joe Huennekens]

Too weird for me

[Nika]

sometimes a book is just too experimental

[Jean-Sylvain]

Le récit d’Anne Lardeux mêle habilement réalité et fantasmes. Nous vivons à travers les personnages des univers bigarrés où la quête d’une existence bonifiée est toujours présente.

[Élisabeth BD]

Pas fini, je me suis rendue au tiers à peu près. Pour vrai, c'était difficile à suivre, les perspectives des personnages se mélangent, on a de la misère à se situer.

[Heather]

Didn't finish; it didn't feel like it was going anywhere.

[Laura Bobyn]

Not one single clue what happened. Not even one.

[Jacob Wren]

"I never fit in at school. I held grudges against the others, though I liked them. Ever the good student, I got pressed into a mould and what got squeezed out took the form of a brick. So I picked it up and threw it."

[Cas]

This is so fake deep intellectual indie art kid coded but in the most pretentious way imaginable.