A Fine Ending

In his powerful debut novel, Louis Rastelli presents the story of a twentysomething struggling musician who drifts through Montreal's music scene. It's the end of the nineties, the end of the 20th century, and the end of an era in the city's Plateau / Mile End district. Rastelli spins spontaneous tales of the artists and musicians, drunks and junkies, and punks and yuppies made neighbours by gentrification. A calamitous ice storm and the looming Y2K are pondered between rounds at the local bar. An apartment is the scene of an impromptu cabaret one night and a church service the next. As the narrator races to save a friend's cats from appallingly casual human cruelties, he tests his faith in those around him, finding hints of solace in abandoned buildings and the home movies of strangers. In a voice that transcends the vernacular yet stays remarkably true to it, Rastelli captures the fin-de-siécle mood while remaining both wise to and untainted by the apathy and cynicism of the times. Singularly evocative.

Louis Rastelli's first published work was in the form of music reviews and interviews written for local alternative magazines when he was sixteen. He began publishing Fish Piss Magazine in 1996, an irregular compendium of local writing and art named "Canada's best zine" by Broken Pencil Magazine. His writing has also appeared in Vice, Clamor, Saturday Night, the Montreal Mirror, and numerous other publications, as well as in a series of self-published miniature books of short stories and historical essays.