The Music Game

By: Stéfanie Clermont, J.C. Sutcliffe - translator

Narrated by: Karie Richards

Not far away from here is a lake. You have to pay for access to its shores, but I know where there’s a hole in the fence. The water will be icy, but it will still be in a liquid state. That’s what I will do today. I will go through the hole in the fence and I’ll dive into the icy water. And then I’ll go home.

Friends since grade school, Céline, Julie, and Sabrina come of age at the start of a new millennium, supporting each other and drifting apart as their lives pull them in different directions. But when their friend dies by suicide in the abandoned city lot where they once gathered, they must carry on in the world that left him behind—one they once dreamed they would change for the better. From the grind of Montreal service jobs, to isolated French Ontario countryside childhoods, to the tenuous cooperation of Bay Area punk squats, the three young women navigate everyday losses and fears against the backdrop of a tumultuous twenty-first century.

An ode to friendship and the ties that bind us together, Stéfanie Clermont’s award-winning The Music Game confronts the violence of the modern world and pays homage to those who work in the hope and faith that it can still be made a better place.

©2022 Stéfanie Clermont and J.C. Sutcliffe (P)2022 Biblioasis International Translation Series

Critic reviews

“Let’s hear it for an indie sleaze-era novel ... class issues, deep friendship, betrayal, a gender transition and anti-globalization protests. You know, just ~Millennial~ stuff!” —NYLON

“In her debut fiction, Montreal writer Stéfanie Clermont locates a 21st Century equivalent to the 1920s’ “lost generation” in a group of young people trying to find meaning and connection in a world of dead-end jobs, unaffordable housing, and romantic disappointments ... The Music Game inhabits a liminal space between different bodies, psyches and geographies. Its characters can display the worst hipster traits ... and genuine insights into their inner selves and the nature of the world around them. If they share undeniable commonalities with lost generations before them, they are nonetheless, in Clermont’s hands, rendered specific and unique.”—Toronto Star

“A stunning, incisive immersion into a community of young radical activists finding love, experiencing violence, rejecting hegemony and struggling to survive financially in a world of dead-end jobs.” —Winnipeg Free Press