Not Everybody Lives the Same Way

For two years now, Paul Hansen has been serving his prison sentence in a provincial prison in Montreal. He shares a cell with Horton, a Hells Angel convicted of murder.

Flashback: Hansen is the caretaker of L’Excelsior, an apartment complex where he uses all his talents as janitor, guard, handyman, and—above all—comforter of souls and friend to the desperate. When he’s not busy helping the residents or maintaining the building, he’s united with Winona, his life partner. Aboard her plane, she takes him high above the clouds, far away from everything.

But soon, everything changes. L’Excelsior gets a new manager, conflicts arise, and the inevitable happens.

A sand-covered church in the dunes, an open-air asbestos mine, the winding course of a silver river, the resonant tones of an organ—these make up the novel’s shifting landscapes.

One of Dubois’s most beautiful books, animated by a profound sense of fraternity and a revolt against all forms of injustice.