A Drifting Year finds Haitian expatriate Laferrière plagued by his recollections. In this short novel written in stanzas, the young exile arrives in the unfamiliar city of Montreal. Here, he quickly discovers all the things endemic to the Canadian immigrant experience; racism, poverty, and disorientation plague the budding writer.
Here is an author at his best when fiction and memoir exploit each other. The dreamscape at the end of the longer novel easily eclipses the cold streets of Montreal and the stinking slums of Port-au-Prince. If A Drifting Year is exploratory surgery, Dead Men is life-saving trauma. Despite all advances in medicine, time will not be cheated. Only writers like Laferrière can hope to make the living walk the earth forever.
-Excerpt from Hal Niedzvieck''s review in Quill and Quire, November 1997
