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HA!A Self-Murder Mystery |
eBook Available
On 15 March 1977, with his wife's consent, celebrated writer and former terrorist Hubert Aquin blew his brains out on the grounds of a Montreal convent school. Shocked by this self-murder, a filmmaker friend feels compelled to understand why Aquin killed himself - and discovers, at the heart of the tragedy, an unforgettable love story.
A "documentary fiction" - a category which includes In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song - HA! is a seminal work that reinvents the audio-visual revolution of the last century. Interweaving photographs, documents, and images with testimony from Aquin's friends and contemporaries, Aquin himself, and the writers and artists who influenced him, this intriguing novel takes the reader on a Joycean tour of a metropolis in the midst of political and cultural turmoil.
A "documentary fiction" - a category which includes In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song - HA! is a seminal work that reinvents the audio-visual revolution of the last century. Interweaving photographs, documents, and images with testimony from Aquin's friends and contemporaries, Aquin himself, and the writers and artists who influenced him, this intriguing novel takes the reader on a Joycean tour of a metropolis in the midst of political and cultural turmoil.
Details
864 Pages, 6.75 x 9.75
photographs
ISBN 9780773531000
April 2006
Formats: Paperback, eBook
"[This book] is far from ordinary. It's a biographical stew, more dossier than narrative, crammed with interviews, letters, photos and maps ... [it is] the strangely enlivening story of a chronic depressive and at the same time a sympathetic treatise on suicide that inadvertently provides excellent reasons for staying alive ... Sheppard takes us deep into an exotic world where romantic nationalism became a generation's mad obsession, where poets and singers were suddenly society's heroes, and where otherwise sensible Montrealers spoke of revolution as if it were likely to happen at any minute ... And yet the core of the material, Aquin's astonishing story and the still more astonishing Montreal of the 1970s, comes through clearly and unforgettably ... Sheppard has made an exceptional book. His description of a moment in history has become in itself a bizarre literary event." Robert Fulford, National Post
"HA! is a harrowing investigation of some of the most profound and troubling aspects of the human condition... a brave and important work that richly deserves our attention and discussion." Quill and Quire
"A fabulous and astounding book... unique and absorbing." Wayne Grady, author of The Quiet Limit of the World and The Bone Museum
"This witty and remarkable book explores the 'self-murder' of a man contending with a craving for death and a passion for life. A spellbinding story by an author who has the instincts of a sleuth and the imaginative insight of an artist." Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
"An astonishing book, sleuth-epic, and quest. Its innovative form makes it riveting, sardonic, heartfelt, satiric and at times grotesquely poignant. A Moby Dick of a book, HA! will not be forgotten in a lifetime. Magnificent!" Seán Virgo, author of A Traveller Came By
"A remarkably fine and sophisticated work ... a clever and very 'Aquinian' book that shows how death can be an artist's ultimate creative act." Jacques Allard, editor of the critical edition of Hubert Aquin's Next Episode
"A magnificent, riveting, terrifying work - analytically brilliant, poetically masterful, and truly a thriller ... it will never leave me ... a wondrous book richly deserving of international success." Susan Kent Davidson, book editor
"One of the most extraordinary works of literature I have ever read ... Simply put, this book is magisterial: playfully conceived, deeply felt, and brilliantly executed."Kirmayer, professor of psychiatry, McGill University
"A work of art... one of Sheppard's goals was to "de-tabloidize" the public's perception of suicide - well, he did that for me, and much more. Some passages made me weep. I finished the book and felt tremendous respect for Aquin, his beloved Andrée, Sheppard himself."Harold Hoefle, Books in Canada
"A sprawling 870-page book that overwhelms every description, a book without equal in Canadian literature ... using a brilliant experimental form, Sheppard brings Aquin to throbbing and pulsing life in a way no conventional biography could." Wiebe, Vue Weekly
"HA! is a truly incredible book. You are unlikely to find many that will even come close to it."Nadkarmi, Between the Pages
"Simply staggering in its study of human torment and brilliantly original in the way in which the story is told... This is the best psychological thriller I have ever read ... a work of genius and a literary masterpiece."Nolan, author and former producer of ABC-TV Network News
"HA! is a harrowing investigation of some of the most profound and troubling aspects of the human condition... a brave and important work that richly deserves our attention and discussion." Quill and Quire
"A fabulous and astounding book... unique and absorbing." Wayne Grady, author of The Quiet Limit of the World and The Bone Museum
"This witty and remarkable book explores the 'self-murder' of a man contending with a craving for death and a passion for life. A spellbinding story by an author who has the instincts of a sleuth and the imaginative insight of an artist." Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
"An astonishing book, sleuth-epic, and quest. Its innovative form makes it riveting, sardonic, heartfelt, satiric and at times grotesquely poignant. A Moby Dick of a book, HA! will not be forgotten in a lifetime. Magnificent!" Seán Virgo, author of A Traveller Came By
"A remarkably fine and sophisticated work ... a clever and very 'Aquinian' book that shows how death can be an artist's ultimate creative act." Jacques Allard, editor of the critical edition of Hubert Aquin's Next Episode
"A magnificent, riveting, terrifying work - analytically brilliant, poetically masterful, and truly a thriller ... it will never leave me ... a wondrous book richly deserving of international success." Susan Kent Davidson, book editor
"One of the most extraordinary works of literature I have ever read ... Simply put, this book is magisterial: playfully conceived, deeply felt, and brilliantly executed."Kirmayer, professor of psychiatry, McGill University
"A work of art... one of Sheppard's goals was to "de-tabloidize" the public's perception of suicide - well, he did that for me, and much more. Some passages made me weep. I finished the book and felt tremendous respect for Aquin, his beloved Andrée, Sheppard himself."Harold Hoefle, Books in Canada
"A sprawling 870-page book that overwhelms every description, a book without equal in Canadian literature ... using a brilliant experimental form, Sheppard brings Aquin to throbbing and pulsing life in a way no conventional biography could." Wiebe, Vue Weekly
"HA! is a truly incredible book. You are unlikely to find many that will even come close to it."Nadkarmi, Between the Pages
"Simply staggering in its study of human torment and brilliantly original in the way in which the story is told... This is the best psychological thriller I have ever read ... a work of genius and a literary masterpiece."Nolan, author and former producer of ABC-TV Network News
Gordon Sheppard (1937-2006) was a Montreal writer, photographer, and award-winning filmmaker who wrote and directed The Most, a documentary about Playboy's Hugh Hefner, and Eliza's Horoscope, a feature film starring Tommy Lee Jones.
Finalist
Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction
Writers' Federation (2004)
Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction
Writers' Federation (2004)
