All Kidding Aside

Louis, a young queer man, lives in Pointe-aux-Trembles, in Montreal’s east end, with his rap-obsessed, schizophrenic brother and their terminally ill father. While working at a Tim Horton’s, Louis dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. Delivered in short, addictive chapters, All Kidding Aside deftly juggles themes of love, class, and grief with poetic mockery and spare, electric banter. Poet, novelist, and screenwriter Jean-Christophe Réhel is the author of six collections of poetry. His first novel, Tatouine, published orginally in French under the title Ce qu’on respire sur Tatouine, won the prestigious Prix littéraire des collegiens in 2019. Published in English in 2020, it was longlisted for Canada Reads. Réhel’s TV series, L’air d’aller, won the Prix des étudiants à Canneseries in 2023. He lives in Montreal. Neil Smith is a Montreal-based writer translator. His novel, Boo, published in 2015, won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His 2007 short story collection, Bang Crunch, was selected as a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Globe and Mail, won the McAuslan First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. The Goddess of Fireflies, Smith’s translation of Geneviève Pettersen’s novel La déesse des mouches à feu, was nominated for the 2016 Governor General’s Award. His latest novel, Jones, published in 2022, was nominated for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Reviews and Praise “All Kidding Aside (…) takes its readers on a journey into a world woven with turbulent adventures, offering a deep and captivating exploration of brotherly love, precarity, and grief.” – Alice Laforce, le Nouvelliste “In Jean-Christophe Réhel’s (…) ‘love letter to comedy’, the poet and screenwriter wrestles with themes that challenge, yet never dip into pity. The winner of the Prix littéraire des collégiens celebrates the beauty the everyday… and laughs about it.”- Radio-Canada “Réhel pulls us into a rather gloomy universe of messy bedrooms, boot-slopped kitchen floors, soulless Timbits, objects of thoughtless gluttony, chunks of sandwich scattered in the street, carrots jammed into the bottom of a snowman’s belly. But ‘in the midst of all this baseness,’ as Brassens might say, we witness real and touching human connections.”- François Lavallée, Nuit Blanche About Tatouine: “A joy to read!” – Shelagh Rogers, CBC’s The Next Chapter “A novel of inventive, self-deprecating humour.” – Jade Colbert, The Globe and Mail “Réhel gives the reader a front-row seat to a baroque and often hilarious interiority – one that highlights the complexity and tragedy of the human condition, while playfully revealing the capacity of the human mind for turning the struggles of existence, large and small, into a source of amusement. […] In addition to the often-dark humour, Réhel has a poet’s eye for rhythm, repetition, and stark imagery that thankfully isn’t lost in the exceptional translation by Katherine Hastings and Peter McCambridge.” (Dean Garlick, Montreal Review of Books) “Certainly one of my favourites of this year.” (Steven Buechler, The Library of Pacific Tranquility)