Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs
The Butcher of Park Ex
and Other Semi-Truthful Tales
- Publisher
- Guernica Editions
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2020
- Category
- Personal Memoirs, Cultural Heritage, Editors, Journalists, Publishers
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771834919
- Publish Date
- Oct 2020
- List Price
- $20.00
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Where to buy it
Description
Kessaris manages to convey a sense of shared history through the prose itself, bringing the Montreal immigrant experience to life with wry humour and painstaking attention to detail. —Montreal Review of Books
The Butcher of Park Ex is a humorous collection of personal stories inspired by the author's life growing up in Montreal's Park Extension neighbourhood, with Greek immigrant parents who never quite adapted to life in their new country. Never really fitting in with his ethnic community, and never feeling like part of mainstream Quebec or Canadian society, he sets out on an over forty-year search for answers, encountering amazingly interesting people and unique misadventures while trying to navigate a world where he is constantly the odd man out.
About the author
Andreas Kessaris grew up in Montreal's Park Extension district, the son of Greek immigrants. He graduated from Dawson College and Concordia University, earning a BA in Communications & English. His column, Read On! with Andreas Kessaris, was a popular feature in the West-End community paper The Local Herald. His writing has also appeared on Suite101.com, in the literary journal The Write Place, and on the Montreal entertainment website Curtainsup.tv, The Miramichi Reader, and The Montreal Review of Books. His first book, The Butcher of Park Ex & Other Semi-Truthful Tales, was released in 2020 to great acclaim. He currently resides in Montreal with his partner. Follow him on X (@Akessaris) or Instagram (andreas_kessaris).
Excerpt: The Butcher of Park Ex: and Other Semi-Truthful Tales (by (author) Andreas Kessaris)
It was 1975 and the English/French dispute in Quebec was reaching a boiling point. The PSBGM English schools taught French in Kindergarten once a week for half an hour. The French teacher, Madame Sigeault, whom I referred to as “Madame Seagull” (not as a sign of disrespect; I actually thought that was her name … I said it to her face and she never corrected me), a no-nonsense, middle-aged blonde with thick glasses who always wore navy blue or black polyester pantsuits, showed up once a week. She never spoke so much as a word to the English teachers, who always seemed to greet her arrival with a low-level degree of snarky contempt.
Editorial Reviews
Kessaris is a born storyteller who immerses the reader in his world. He makes you feel as if you know his characters, or people like them. He vividly recreates childhood scenes, but does not spoil them with excessive nostalgia. His tone is by turns comic, tragic or sarcastic, but always honest and intense.
Richard Van Holst
Kessaris is generous with his story-telling. His collection features 24 “semi-truthful tales,” each with a nice twist revealing the narrator’s personality in bite-size doses.
The Ottawa Review of Books
The stories that Kessaris shares in the book are filled with humour, comedy, camaraderie, and plenty of pathos that will automatically create a deep feeling of empathy for the author in his endless pursuit of personal happiness.
The Montreal Times
Rambunctious, big-hearted and lively, this book is both entertaining and moving. Andreas Kessaris writes with ruthless honesty and tenderness about authentic characters, their misadventures and passions, and his memories of growing up in an iconic Montreal neighbourhood.
Cora Siré
The stories in The Butcher of Park Ex are sometimes irreverent, and at times even a little sad, but they’re always filled with humour and honesty. Andreas Kessaris tells it like it is and doesn’t shy away from self-deprecation. He could be the star of his own sitcom, a sort of Greek Anglo-Montrealer mix of Kramer and George in Seinfeld. If someone asked me which Greek God best represents Andreas, I would answer: “The one that couldn’t sit still, broke the mould, and doesn’t have his own statue."
Montreal Noir
It gave me pleasure, made me laugh, made me think, and made me feel. What more can a reader ask?
Montreal Review of Books
A bittersweet but charming coming of age look at the universal Montreal immigrant experience. Brimming with a yearning innocent nostalgia, it brings the rich street scene of Park Extension to life with painstaking attention to the telling detail.
Tommy Schnurmacher, broadcaster and author of Makeup Tips From Auschwitz: How Vanity Saved My Mother’s Life
For Montrealers, the liberal use of local landmarks and street names helps contribute to the impression that we’ve been here before; over the course of the collection, he attends parties on Clark Street, peruses record stores on Ste. Catherine’s, and recalls childhood trips to the Fairview centre in Pointe-Claire and Les Galeries d’Anjou. But the sense of paramnesia goes beyond place names that exist on a map. Kessaris manages to convey a sense of shared history through the prose itself, bringing the Montreal immigrant experience to life with wry humour and painstaking attention to detail.
Montreal Review of Books
Andreas Kessaris's collection of short stories will delight the reader. Each tale is a gem combining wit with deeper feelings drawn from life. After reading this book readers will wait impatiently for more from this talented writer.
CBC