Tag: Jason Hrivnak

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French and Québécois online reviews, part four

“The succession of tests unwinds with clinical frigidity, which contrasts with their content and gives the impression of participating in a game, the stakes of which, however, surpass the dimension of simple play… La Maison des Épreuves is in reality a cry of love and despair, that extracts a sickly beauty from childhood anguishes in order to attempt to exorcise them, a guide for navigation between life and death, a set of directions for tolerating the pain of existence.”

— Ingannmic, “La maison des epreuves — Jason Hrivnak”

BOOK’ING >

MCR: “A book that blew your mind?”
DC: “La Maison des Épreuves by Jason Hrivnak. A nightmarish book recently published by Éditions de l’Ogre, a cross between a survival manual and a kind of search for redemption. It’s the “literary UFO” of the current publishing season.”

— David Cantin, interviewed by Marie-Claude Rioux

Hop! Sous la couette >

“I didn’t expect to find such content and it’s a delight! We have the possibility of participating in the novel, what happiness. I’m astonished to have found what I was able to read into it. The same reflections and choices are waiting for you.”

— Laétitia, “La maison des épreuves”

La demoiselle aux cerfs >

“Jason Hrivnak’s book, La Maison des Épreuves, is one of those collections of stories that open a door hidden in the shadow of our imagination. The door that we avoid, on pain of feeling the heart beat too fast… Book of sorrow and consolation, La Maison des Épreuves, as its name indicates, is meant to test, to show, and to illuminate at the same time that it plunges us into the abyss.”

— “La Maison des Epreuves – Jason Hrivnak”

Oh Océane >

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French and Québécois online reviews, part three

“It’s therefore a novel about the saving power of the imagination… an imagination that constitutes an abyss into which you must throw yourself in order to survive… Every paragraph is like the pitch for a tale that Kafka or Burroughs could have written, a dream forever mutating into nightmare.”

— Pierre, “Dans le style du napalm”

Mauvaise Chimie >

“La maison des épreuves is a book that obliges readers to leave their passivity, a sometimes disturbing book with a complicated construction. That being said, Jason Hrivnak’s first novel has something obsessive about it… One musn’t just read La maison des épreuves, one must take total possession of it.

— Anaïs Orieul, “10 livres à lire absolument en attendant le printemps”

Terrafemina >

“We’re plunged without cease into situations that are unsound, discomfiting, designed, we understand in the end, to put a name to pain, to put a name to that which should not be… Expect to have plenty of dreams at night in which Hrivnak’s words rock you to sleep…”

— Elizabeth Lord, “La Maison des épreuves de Jason Hrivnak: un beau cauchemar”

Les Méconnus >

“La maison des épreuves is a book of the dead for the use of the living, the gaze of Orpheus toward a suicidal Eurydice… A masterpiece of literary game-craft.”

— Lucien Raphmaj, “Et Fiona avec vous au labyrinthe descendue…”

Latérature >

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More French bloggers on La Maison des Épreuves

“Labyrinth, monument, Pandora’s box… La Maison des Épreuves, Jason Hrivnak’s first novel… is, beneath its somber and depressed appearance, a beautiful response to the death drive and a stimulating ode to existence.”

— Eric Darsan, “La Maison des Épreuves, Jason Hrivnak”

Eric Darsan >

“La Maison des Épreuves never ceases to surprise, accumulating puzzles, incantations and scenes of remarkable visual power, its gaze as much upon Poe, Burton and Lovecraft as upon the grammar of the most twisted horror films.”

— Cyril Tavan, “La Maison des Épreuves de Jason Hrivnak”

Les Carnets du Pr. Platypus >

“Translated by Claro, La Maison des Épreuves is an astonishing, disconcerting book in which the passion for death and failure appear much stronger and more singular than the search for happiness, as if consolation could only be derived from the products of sorrow.”

— Fabien Ribery, “Debout, au milieu du désastre”

Le blog de Fabien Ribery >

“La Maison des Épreuves is a literary curiosity… We exit intrigued and at the same time marked by this difficult and fascinating reading experience, perplexed by our own feelings, as at the end of a disturbing and absurd dream.”

— Anne, “La Maison des Épreuves de Jason Hrivnak”

Textualités >

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French booksellers on La Maison des Épreuves

“The narrative of this work is completely original, it made me think of “books in which you yourself are the hero”, but where that hero has been led astray into a labyrinth of possible worlds, of stories from the mind of a malefic Borges… This book is absolutely an experience to be lived.”

— Aurélie Janssens, Page et Plume (Limoges)

“At once a manual for surviving in a hostile world, a role-playing game for twisted misanthropes, a eulogy for a lost time, and a search for redemption: a novel from beyond the pale that truly has everything required to become a cult book.”

— Pierre Barrault, Librairie La Belle Lurette (Paris)

“You finish this book the way you open your eyes at the end of an agitated sleep: a little dazed and troubled, with the certainty of having read a strange and poignant work that is just as inventive as it is destabilizing.”

— Philippe Guazzo, Le Comptoir des Mots (Paris)

“Poetic, staggering, transgressive, electrifying. A vibrant book that will not leave you unscathed.”

— Céline, Librairie Prado Paradis (Marseille)

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French bloggers on La Maison des Épreuves

“It is a book that opens paths, that deploys a range of imaginings crafted with very great virtuosity. And which, at the same time, has this power, a kind of harrowing intimate resonance, the experience of which you have no choice but to accept.”

— NIKOLA DELESCLUSE, Paludes radio show

Paludes >

“La Maison des Épreuves cuts a torturous path in a form that is new, surprising, destabilizing… The game is dangerous: we leave it troubled — or rather, awakened… It is one of the most poetic and striking publications (from Éditions de l’Ogre) and must be read at any cost.”

— LOU DARSAN, Lou et les feuilles volantes

Lou et les feuilles volantes >

“Jason Hrivnak proves that there can be rightness in the extreme, tenderness in the darkness of the soul, and beauty in horror… La Maison des Épreuves is at once a work of magic and a tour de force.”

— HÉLOÏSE, Un Dernier Livre Avant la Fin du Monde

Un Dernier Livre Avant la Fin du Monde >

“This work, beyond the adventurous spirit that seizes us in reading it, is truly an anti-suicide manual and a guide for reenchantment with the world… Personally, if (Hrivnak) is able to repeat such a miracle, staggering in its intelligence and playful subtlety, then I for one would want it, and soon.”

— HUGUES ROBERT, Librairie Charybde (Paris)

Librairie Charybde blog >

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National press coverage in France

“The embryonic narratives formed into black and venomous little tales, recalling those of Edgar Poe… Like all new works, it does not subscribe to a genre but creates one if its own, a form never before seen, a precedent, perhaps, in the history of literature and it therefore seems necessary to me that it exists, that it can be read, even imitated.”

— Alice Zéniter, “Traduire, dit-elle”

Le Monde (paywall) >

“The first ordeal in this House is the act of reading. It presents us with a deforming (or true) mirror that reflects what we are determined not to see. But this atmosphere, which comes from Sade, from Kafka, from the great gothic and surrealist novels, engages us from the very start.”

— Alain Nicolas, “Quel cauchemar êtes-vous?”

l’Humanité >

“There is something astonishing in La Maison des Épreuves.”

— Mathieu Lindon, “Jeux Pernicieux Inc.”

Libération >

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Full comments from the Oneline Reviews

“This book changed me.

What’s so great about it? Well, it left me in tears, and kept me entranced for several hours while I greedily plowed through it. It’s the most unique thing I’ve ever read, and calling it a novel somehow seems wrong. It’s not structured like a novel, it doesn’t start or end like a novel. It starts rather slowly, actually, and when I went to pass on my tattered and tearstained copy to my partner, I almost wanted to tell him not to read the Prologue. Not because it’s poorly written or anything like that, but because it’s ‘normal’, and unlike the rest of the book. It’s written with a voice that’s simple and gentle, just a man talking about a girl he used to know.

Once you’re through the Prologue and start your journey through The Plight House, there’s no turning back. Don’t read this if you have to be somewhere, if you don’t have time to just give it the undivided attention it deserves. It’s like a guided meditation, it’s like a lucid dream primer, and it’s like a nightmare.

And it’s wonderful. Hrivnak has such a beautiful command of the language, and is undeterred in his creation of The Plight House. Some passages cause you to sink, like entering the ocean with your clothes on. Others are hopeful and uplifting, carrying the reader to heights of imagination and love. This book requires your cerebral and spiritual participation. Once you’ve read it, you will want to give it to anyone you love. Simply flawless.”

— THE ONELINE REVIEWS

the Oneline Reviews >

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“Inspiration for the rest of us”

Blogger Carrie Carm has included The Plight House in her Monday column, Inspiration for the rest of us.

“This week’s inspiration is grief and strange beauty: Jason Hrivnak’s The Plight House, a stunning, deadly book. It’s just so sad and odd and gorgeous.

It is even pleasing as a physical object, all by itself. Published by Pedlar Press out of Toronto and with cover art by Tom Poirier — the book’s official website banner shows it off — it has high-quality, laid paper (with visible chain lines), and the layout of the book leaves plenty of negative space: a book design success.

The content itself is divine.”

— CARRIE CARM

carriecarm >