Born during the Great Depression, Jean-Claude Morel is an Everyman, an ordinary Montreal construction worker who has built the city with his own hands, digging its metro, creating islands, and weaving expressways through the downtown core. But the progress has come at a cost: neighbourhoods have been razed, streets wiped off the map, and the Morel family expropriated.

Teeming with life, Morel uncovers a story of Montreal that has been buried under years of glitzy urban renewal and modernization. This intricately constructed literary novel is a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, a monument to a city, and a toast to days gone by.

Maxime Raymond Bock's profile page

Melissa Bull's profile page

Maxime Raymond Bock was born in Montreal, where he lives today. His first book, a collection of short stories, won the Prix Adrienne-Choquette and was published by Dalkey Archive Press as Atavisms in 2015. Baloney, a novella, was published by Coach House Books in 2016. Morel, his début novel, was a finalist for the Prix des libraires, Prix littéraire des collégiens, Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, Prix Senghor and the Rendez-vous du premier roman.

Melissa Bull is a half-franco, half-anglo writer, editor, and translator. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Rue, and a collection of fiction, The Knockoff Eclipse. Melissa is the translator of Pascale Rafie's play, The Baklawa Recipe, Nelly Arcan's collection Burqa of Skin, and Marie-Sissi Labrèche's novel, Borderline. Melissa has a BA in Creative Writing from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She lives in Montreal.

"It's a gritty story of a working-class Montreal family — the Morels of the title. (. . .) a novel that reminds me of some of Zola's representations of working people in similar circumstances." Simon Lavery, Tredynas Days

"Morel is a love letter to the Montreal of the past, present, and future--to the Montreal that might have been, the Montreal forgotten. It's a cliché to say that a city is a character in a novel, but to Bock, a city is like a life, with painful and joyful memories accumulating and disappearing like archeological material. ( . . . ) Like many good novels, it will leave you feeling as if you?ve lived a life." Sam White, Literary Review of Canada (Sep 2024)

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"One of the six books originally written in French that we loved," Heather O?Neill and Arizona O?Neill

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"A hymn to a Montreal that has vanished--not by twists of fate, but under the pummeling of asphalt driven by an insatiable capitalism.( . . . ) Bock's hero (Morel) becomes a metonym for a generation of Montreal's working class. ( . . . ) With its sprinkling of Quebecois profanities, (Mélissa) Bull's translation carries over traces of Joual, the dialect of Montreal's francophone working class." Eamon McGrath, Full Stop, Cleveland State University

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"Morel is an enjoyable novel, one to savour over several sittings, featuring a charismatic protagonist with an incident-filled life, even if he never really ventures far beyond the city he grew up in. A tale of a working-class man, Bock's work tells the story of all those who made it possible for everyone else to enjoy convenient transportation and luxurious office buildings. In effect, for those of us who've led a more sheltered life, it's a glimpse behind the scenes, and a chance to vicariously get our hands dirty." Tony Malone, Tony's Reading List

"An astounding book . . . a mini epic of an ordinary man, and a time capsule of post-war Montreal with all its problems, economic, political,and environmental. I highly recommend it." James Fisher, Founding Editor of The Miramichi Reader

"One of the greatest Quebec novelists and short story writers of our time." Lettres québécoises2022

"The author's language is as precise as the actions he describes, as rich as the demons that trouble Morel, as bustling as the neighborhood that is swallowed up. And it turns out to be unexpectedly beautiful: a deeply buried gold nugget, freshly dug out, covered in earth, that suddenly starts to gleam." (Josée Boileau, Le Journal de Montréal)

"A novel both monumental and ethereal." (Philippe Manevy, Lettres québécoises)

"It makes brilliant use of language, rides roughshod over clichés about the Grande Noirceur, and delves deep into working-class alienation, with an incredible appetite for manual labour and all things homo faber. [...] Morel is the most accomplished and liveliest working-class saga you''ll have the pleasure of reading this year." (Olivier Boisvert, Librairie Gallimard)

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Finalist

Prix des libraires
Prix littéraire des collégiens
Grand Prix du livre de Montréal
Prix Senghor
Rendez-vous du premier roman

"Maxime Raymond Bock affirms, with Morel, his unique signature of erudition and humanity." Mario Cloutier, La Presse

About Bock's short story collection Atavisms

"Bock's language crackles with the energy of a Québécois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic." Pasha Malla, The New Yorker

"Bock creates an impressive diversity of voices." Andrew Irwin, The Times Literary Supplement