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Céline Wachowski, internationally renowned architect and accidental digital-culture icon, unveils her plans for the Webuy Complex, her first megaproject in Montreal, her hometown.
But instead of the triumph she anticipates in finally bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is excoriated by critics, who accuse her of callously destroying the social fabric of neighborhoods, ushering in a new era of gentrification, and many even deadlier sins. When she is deposed as CEO of her firm, Céline must make sense of the charges against herself and the people in her elite circle. For the first time in danger of losing their footing, what fictions must they tell themselves to justify their privilege and maintain their position in the world that they themselves have built?
Moving fluidly between Céline's perspective and the perspectives of her critics, and revealing both the ruthlessness of her methods and the brilliance of her aesthetic vision, May Our Joy Endure is a shrewd examination of the microcosm of the ultra-privileged and a dazzling social novel that depicts with razor-sharp acuity the terrible beauty of wealth, influence, and art.
"Award-winning Canadian novelist Lambert weaves a hypnotic narrative, smoothly translated from French by Winkler, about greed and inequality, hypocrisy, and, not least, a 'dangerous notion of purity' ... An astute critique of entrenched power." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[This book reminds us that] literature doesn't have to look for culprits, but that it should strive to point out the forces that weaken our solidarities." —La Presse (Montreal)
"Supremely cunning ... Between the cracks of its shifting perspective, the book's darkness seeps through and creates a narrative landslide: the powerful, come what may, will remain in their ivory towers, untouchable. A novel that turns asphyxiation into a reader's delight, as long as we are willing to take the plunge." —Le Monde (Paris)
"Baroque and philosophical, May Our Joy Endure captures the sensibilities and excesses of the elite. A novel about the housing crisis told from the perspective of those causing it. Lambert captures how the ultra-wealthy justify their actions and sing their own praises while the population is crushed beneath their eloquent tapestry of lies. Lambert's writing is lyrical and rapturous. In this book, he proves himself a satirical and whimsical Robespierre, hailing from small town Quebec." —Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads
This information about May Our Joy Endure was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in 1992, Kevin Lambert grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. May Our Joy Endure won the Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. His second novel, Querelle de Roberval, was acclaimed in Quebec, where it was nominated for four literary prizes; in France, where it was a finalist for the Prix Médicis and Prix Le Monde and won the Prix Sade; and Canada, where it was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His first novel, You Will Love What You Have Killed, also widely acclaimed, won a prize for the best novel from the Saguenay region and was a finalist for Quebec's Booksellers' Prize. Lambert lives in Montreal.
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