Reviews

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

coffeefilter's review

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challenging reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

lsparrow's review against another edition

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3.0

I really enjoy Belcourt's poetry. I appreciated the way this book weaves through and does not follow traditional novel approaches although I ultimately found it difficult to connect to the style.

matchamelon's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

zackseuberling's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

mredhead's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

mynameisprerna's review against another edition

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5.0

A somewhat autobiographical novel about someone who sets out to write an autobiographical novel - it’s meta on many levels!

There is a lot of jaded snark that I really appreciated.
And beside River was an almost invisible sentence that sounded to us like the rallying cry of our generation: ‘Write poems, eat ass, and dismantle private property.’

The narrator recalls a lot of different events, seemingly disparate, but all coming back to this idea of belonging, place, and identity. For example, he talks about a one night stand -
He could give everything to me, years and years of everything, because he would never  thereafter have to face down the debris in my cupped hands.
The recognition of how this man could imbue so much trust and intimacy specifically because this identity, this place was temporary, really struck me.

As I said, much of this book is quite meta -
Wanting to write a novel about Northern Alberta might in part be my way of initiating some sort of homecoming.
I appreciated this idea of how, when we choose our queerness, we often give up our sense of home. But, through his art, the narrator seems to find it again.

grapecandy's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

pnwbibliophile's review

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This beautifully captured a perspective I’ve never read before—that of a Native queer grad student from a rural Alberta rez seeking to find himself as he writes a novel giving representation to the marginalized communities he’s a part of. He both grapples with a state that’s oppressed his people for centuries as well as where his own identity fits within these communities. The author has a gift with intermixing poignant reflection with literary, even poetic, language. Ocean Vuong is refererenced a couple times and you can see his influence on the author’s own writing style (I love Ocean Vuong so I loved seeing that). Yet Billy-Ray Belcourt has his own unique, distinct, and important voice. More than that, he is an artist. You can see that with his sentence-craft and the wider narrative structure. He brings together stories from people in the unnamed narrator’s life—his cousin, a guy he hooks up with, an auntie, and a brother who’s been imprisoned. These stories both reflect the narrator’s own identity while simultaneously making him sometimes feel estranged from them—giving this uneasy, reflective, melancholic feeling which was captured so well. These disparate stories come together to make up the voices in “A Minor Chorus.” This novel isn’t a “feel good” novel, but it captures the idea of what identity means within these marginalized communities so eloquently. The feeling of being “a part of” and “apart from” the communities you belong to is a piece of queer identity which was portrayed brilliantly here. Can’t wait to read more of his work.

mernon's review against another edition

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emotional

3.75

madgerdes's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0