LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC, ELLE CANADA, LITERARY HUB, NATIONAL POST, AND DAILY HIVE
“An achingly gorgeous debut novel of Indigenous survival.... This is a breathtaking and hypnotic achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents.
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.
What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Whether he’s meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become—and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
Canada Reads Selection 2026
"The narrator has just left his PhD thesis to explore his roots in Northern Alberta. He’s trying to write a novel that captures the place he comes from and the people he knows as an Indigenous, queer man. He meets several different characters and finds himself in a variety of circumstances that showcase who complex people are and that there is a lot more to people than good and bad. Overall, I liked this book. I usually enjoy books that are more plot heavy than character driven. This is more character forward, but the characters feel very real. They are flawed and living in circumstances that are super complicated. I’ve read a lot of indigenous fiction in Ontario, so it was eye-opening to read about some of the similarities and differences that seem to pop up throughout Canada. I think the pieces that stuck out to me the most was a scene in which the narrator is visiting a residential school to mourn and a white woman threatens to call security on him for trespassing. It was very ironic, heartbreaking and frustrating to read. The other scene that jumped out to me was one of the last ones, in which the narrator is in discussion with an old friend in prison. That chapter was very emotional to read. This is one of the five choices for Canada Reads 2026! I can’t wait for the debates in April."
