Pascal Girard – författare

Burdened with grief, confusion, and anger, Pascal Girard explores the childhood passing of his five-year-old brother. Girard delves into the emotional repercussions of this life-changing trauma, from his memories as a nine-year old struggling to understand up until present day, twenty-five years after the shattering loss. At the heart of Nicolas lies the question shared by most undergoing bereavement: why? This confusion multiplies for a young boy with few answers to his questions, lacking even a basic explanation of the cause of his brother's departure. As sorrow and guilt are muffled by time and the flurry of even the most typical childhood and adolescence, this is a story of grief not grieved, and a glimpse into the ongoing process of reckoning. Pascal struggles to reconcile the magnitude of this tragedy with the minutiae of his daily experience of loss. Nicolas is a delicate, minimalist portrait of the many faces of mourning, identified with surprising humor and pathos by an artist who knows them intimately.Originally published in a micro-run ten years ago, Girard creates new comics and an introduction that contemplate the larger effect of Nicolas's death on his current behaviors and habits. With masterful visual restraint, Girard pens a work of great honesty and integrity: Nicolas resonates long after the book is closed, the weight of the story echoing closely the heft of the personal loss.

A mat-leave murder mystery, complete with post-partum physiotherapy and suspicious grocery store footageTranslated by Aleshia JensenRebecca s got an eight-month-old baby and a mystery to investigate! Late one summer night as she s breastfeeding Lucie, she spots two men carrying something heavy into a white minivan. It s probably nothing serious, but when Rebecca hears that a home health care provider named Eduardo Morales disappeared from the neighbourhood that very night, she puts her detective hat on and gets to work. Over the course of the subsequent weeks, Rebecca juggles motherhood and detective work alternating between unproductive visits with the Simard family, for whom the missing Eduardo worked, and tearful visits to potential daycares for Lucie. She faces down inconclusive interviews with evasive subjects and inconveniently timed diaper changes. Pascal Girard s observational humor and perfect timing shine through each page, highlighting how Rebecca s (over)confident, brash approach gets results, not just with the troublesome Simards but with everyone in her life. Rebecca and Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor is a lighthearted maternity leave mystery that centers a new mother in all her postpartum glory.