A review by mynameisprerna
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

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.