Larue’s elder by some 23 years, Blouin writes in a distinctly jaded, if not outright cynical, register in Skin House.

Pablo Strauss, The Dishwasher, Biblioasis, 2019īenders, bloodshot eyes, illicit temptations, impulse control issues, consequential bad decisions, intermittent pangs of remorse: the wintry, darkly atmospheric pages of Michael Blouin’s Skin House and Stéphane Larue’s The Dishwasher are awash in special blends of misery resulting from the accumulation of elements like these-or collisions among them. Even making peanuts, the dishpit seemed the more attractive option.Michael Blouin, Skin House, Anvil Press, 2019 I imagined wearing fitted shirts, tight pants and pointy polished shoes, tiptoeing across the floor with my hand full of dishes, kowtowing to customers. “Another one wants work out on the floor? Your buddy Dave never stopped bugging Maude to see if he could train out front.” I couldn’t tell where my body ended I’d become part of this rocky, roaring wave of sound and sweating bodies. As the mosh pit grew bigger it sucked me up in its undertow and the craziness and I tapped into the mania swirling all around me.

She jumped into the melee, climbed over the swirl of bodies smashing into each other, then let herself be swept along by the crowd, tumbling over the human sea all the way to the foot of the stage. When “Hangar 18” came on, she really went crazy. We had to back up to keep from being sucked into the mosh pit.

He has tattoos all the way down to his fingers now, and his hands have grown fatter, hands inscribed with the scars of twenty years in the kitchen, burned daily and gouged by wayward oyster shuckers and subjected to malevolent blades severing tiny chunks of fingertip thousands of shifts spent shelling, peeling, dicing, stirring, gutting, deboning, and chopping the never-ending repetitive handling of foods raw and cooking and cooked the infinite cycle of frying pans and scouring stainless counters with steel wool and industrial-strength degreasers.

Bébert’s keeping one eye on the hockey game, and one hand on his big bottle of beer.

Le Plongeur by Stéphane Larue