Dawson’s Clique

Emmanuelle Pierrot’s debut novel, La version qui n’intéresse personne (The version no one cares about), has all the ingredients to be terrible. It follows Sacha, a young Montrealer who winds up in Dawson City, doing drugs, fooling around, and becoming deeply attached to her dog. At some point, her new punk friends begin to shun her. Yet rather than sinking into melodrama, the book has the immersive energy of a Beat narrative, one that subtly shifts from celebrating to critiquing its milieu. The disintegration of Sacha’s social capital is at once a deeply felt disaster and a case study of how misogyny reproduces itself.

The story is largely chronological, with a first section labelled “Paradise.” An ominous prologue, however, signals that all will not be well: “One day, the village no longer wanted me. It trapped me, crushed me, and it spit me out.” This simple structure proves effective, as it primes readers for warning signs that the protagonist blows...