Customer Reviews

Ha!: A Self-murder Mystery

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This is simply the most unique and impressive book I have ever come across. It weighs in at a whopping 1.6 Kg or 3 1/2lbs. After 6 straight days of reading I feel educated, voyeuristic, saddened and have a deeper sense of insight into Quebec History and Aquin's literary influences. The book, 26 years in the making, is the story of Hubert Aquin's life and ultimate death by his own 'words'. Sheppard explicitly depicts Aquin's life and death as a work of art with respect to a long tradition of such in literature and film. Through quotes, musical interludes and interviews Aquin's last violent act was a work of art by a shattered man. His life, full of tragedy (self-inflicted or otherwise), love and loss, begat several classics in Quebec Literature, namely Prochain Episode. Sheppard's book surely merits a wide audience as does the work of Aquin. I urge you to consider reading this book. Excellent value for the $$. Do pick up and read a copy... it is like jumping off a floating dock in the middle of a familiar lake of your childhood memories. You can swim safely near the tether and enjoy the security that its proximity provides, or risk wading farther away and try to touch the bottom to see how deep you can go. Metaphors aside, it is better to use Sheppard's own words from his 1969 essay, Violence and the French Canadian Male, an early critique of Aquin's first two novels, "We all must try to understand how to be worthy of it." *

* Canada: A Guide to the Peaceable Kingdom, ed. William Kilbourn. p.192.

This remarkable work of fiction/biography/rapportage and montage is both vastly entertaining and deeply disturbing. Certainly, it is the most detailed portrait of the emotional and cultural logic of a suicide ever written. It is also a window onto the landscape of Quebec society in the 60s and 70s. All this is offered in the most accessible and playful form with multimedia annotations, and cultural excursions that carry the reader along through circle after circle in this intimate journey. Anyone who loves literature, is fascinated by human motivations, or simply wants to know more about a unique soul in its place and time, will be richly rewarded.

We agree. This book will give you a powerful look into the mind of a man who considered suicide from a very high intellectual standpoint and helps you to understand why someone might take their own life, yet still I wonder if it wasn't a waste of a life. We like to think that there's always a way to solve this problem but maybe sometimes it is the right thing to do, and thus, it must be done properly, so here's the guide for those who chose the ultimate. Sheppard succeeds in his goal of writing the account as a friend of Herbert. This has to be an unrecognized work... not of genius, but of love of one man for another and of a commitment to historical biographical documentation. I read it twice.