The Chalioux Kid (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781771716031)

Madeleine Monette sets the stage of The Chalioux Kid in an anonymous city. Its protagonists are Arielle, a young singer for whom love is a risky business, and a boy who is barely surviving his childhood and risks homelessness if not worse. While refusing to go on stage, Arielle cultivates her operatic voice, a safe place to keep her feelings. When she witnesses the boy with the backpack, a fan of rap and extreme roller skating, committing a dreadful crime, she devotes herself to opening him up to his creative nature through music and writing. Between her new, attentive yet evasive lover and the boy nicknamed Mute or the mute, Arielle discovers that she has a gift for stimulating other people's imagination whether it be towards sincerity or dishonesty.