BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
In this contemplative novel-poem, Jean-François Beauchemin invites us to share in the inner world of the grieving Mr. Bartolomé, who, following the mysterious disappearance of his young son, wanders and wonders, seeking to transcend his pain by encountering something larger than himself. Continuously occupied by the memory of his lost son, Bartolomé’s quest leads him from the city to the countryside and then to the edge of the ocean, where he marvels at the beauty of nature but cannot penetrate its mysteries.
Through reference to the two-million-year-old “Turkana Boy,” the fossilized remains of a boy found in 1984 near Lake Turkana, Kenya, Beauchemin addresses processes of memory and the long history of human evolution. Beauchemin’s character Bartolomé sees in the lives of the boys—separated by nearly two million years—a kind of twin destiny. Has the passage of millennia changed the intensity of human feeling at the loss of blood relations? “Who knows what they had felt? Had the same emotions, those associated with incommensurable loss, broken their bodies, as they had his? Over and above morphological differences sculpted by the passage of millennia, was there something resembling a permanence of feeling, a sort of eternity for the murmuring of the heart, transmitted through the ages by the bonds of blood?”
Turkana Boy offers a poignant examination of grieving and one man’s search for understanding. This surrealist narrative is punctuated with magnificent musings on the world and startling questions about what it means to be alive.
Jean-François Beauchemin has been called “one of the best-kept secrets” of Quebecois literature. He is the recipient of the 2005 Prix France-Québec / Jean Hamelin for Le jour des corneilles and the 2007 Prix des libraires for La fabrication de l’aube. Most recently, Beauchemin wrote a trilogy of semi-autobiographical books exploring “the tragic beauty of the world,” which, like Turkana Boy, explore grief, wonder and the nature of the soul. Le Jour des Corneilles is presently being adapted as an animated film. He lives in Sainte-Anne-des-Lacs, Quebec, and writes works of fiction, autobiography and poetry—none of which has previously been translated.
“Reading Jean-François Beauchemin is an experience in itself. It’s like an exercise in meditation; like pausing in front of a particular image, in a suspended moment. It is him in the image—as he projects himself—but it is ourselves that we see, or rather those aspects of our own lives which have escaped us.”
– Le Devoir
“Grace of writing, depth of feeling and a plea for the beauty of things: Jean-François Beauchemin continues to set himself apart as a remarkable novelist.” – ELLE Quebec
“The universe of Jean-François Beauchemin’s novels is haunted by the ghost of childhood—its naiveté and purity as much as its cruelty and wildness.”– Voir
“An excellent novel and an extremely beautiful reflection that will move the reader deeply.” – Radio-Canada
“[Jean-François Beauchemin] is an author known for his writings about life, full of deep and heartfelt reflection. He opens the door wide to allow us into the core of his being. He is the kind of person you meet and with whom, after the first sentence, and without quite knowing why, you are talking earnestly about the meaning of life.”
– Le Passe Mot
“Beauchemin’s writing falls on us like a mist, like sorrow, slowly, in the soft nightfall of things.” – Radio Basse-Ville