Involuntary Bliss

By Devon Code

Even in death, he said, the novella’s power would bind us together, all of us who had read it, appealing as it did equally to our emotions and our intellects.

A bond between three friends forms over a mutual fascination with an obscure Peruvian novella and is fractured by an accidental death. From the streets of Montreal's Plateau and Latin Quarter to the ruins of Machu Picchu, award-winning author Devon Code's Involuntary Bliss traces this tragic affinity with dark humour and linguistic verve.

Over one hazy weekend in late August, an unnamed narrator visits his troubled friend James following a gap of many months. The two young men are set adrift in the city by way of James's memories, which flow out of him as lush set pieces—an affair, a stint volunteering at a children's hospital, a striptease show—assembling a picture of James's haunted life in the wake of their close friend's death.

By turns comic, erotic, tender and harrowing, this freewheeling narrative sees Montreal's bohemians and biker gangs entwine with psychotropic shamanic practices in the mountains of Peru, in a tale of friendship and mortality as unpredictable as it is true to life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Oct 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771662505

Devon Code

Devon Code is a fiction writer. He is the author of Involuntary Bliss, a novel, and In A Mist, a collection of stories. His latest fiction can be read in issue 107 of Geist. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. Originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, he lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where he teaches at Fleming College.

Reviews for Involuntary Bliss

[lkernagh · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What an odd story. It reads like an edgy, freewheeling existential novel, with everything from bohemian artists, a biker gang and a strange Peruvian mountain shamen peddling a psychotropic drink as a means to spiritual release and enlightenment. The story spirals around repeated mentions an unnamed novella with a theme of involuntary bliss. Code continually skirts the edges of this novella, and its elusive meaning. Instead, he focuses on James's frustrated attempts to make sense of the world around him.Overall, I found this to be very frustrating, annoying novel to read. The character James is an enigma. I have no problem with characters that are completely adrift in life, but Code treats the entire story like a coded puzzle, cast adrift just like James, leaving the reader to reach their own conclusions on the themes presented. This story brings to mind Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, albeit on a much smaller scale than Bolaño’s hefty tome and is probably better suited to that type of reading audience.