FRANCIS

FRANCIS IS A NOVEL OF SMOKE AND MIRRORS WITH A STRIKINGLY ORIGINAL STRUCTURE.

Antoine is 15 years old and lives in a gloomy, impoverished small town with his chronically depressive mother and chronically unemployed father. Finding a lonely refuge in reading, he dreams of becoming a writer. But he's all alone and nothing ever happens, so what story will he have to tell? Antoine is all but invisible at school - until the local bully, Francis Pigeon, the kid all the others are afraid of, has a proposition for him, promising to take him on all the adventures he needs to fill the novel he dreams of writing. As a toxic friendship develops between the two teenagers, it isn't long before things go a step too far.
Exploring the story of an unhappy childhood, this novel touches on the themes of family, coming of age, and the double inside us all, in an eye-opening tribute to the evil powers of fiction.

EXCERPT
An observation tower looms in front of us. I'm surprised I've never seen it before. My gaze lingers on this archaic structure that must be more than 20 metres high and towers over the tallest trees in the forest. Francis laughs.
"I can't believe I've never seen this before," I say. "I walk around here quite often."
"That's not unusual," Francis smiles enigmatically. "It's not always visible. It only appears when it wants to be found."
"Oh, give it a rest!" I protest.
"It's true," Francis insists. "And you'd never believe how many people have gone missing walking around here, you know... Go on, climb it then!"
I have to admit I'm not very sure of myself as I inch my way up the steps of this dangerously shaky tower. It's like a scaffold made of toothpicks, on the verge of collapsing at any moment. But there's no way I'm going to let Francis Pigeon call me chicken!

Alexandre Michaud is 31 years old and has been an insatiable reader since he was very young. In his twenties, he studied TV scriptwriting before deciding to learn Russian, which led him to study in Moscow for a year. He has a Master's in French language literature from Université de Montréal.