Shroom, Shroom

There’s a cliché that the writing life is solitary, spent in a lonely garret but in contact with a higher source of inspiration. With Kilworthy Tanner, Jean Marc Ah‑Sen takes aim at this notion with the reckless abandon of a hardcore band. In chronicling the loves, estrangements, and pharmacological adventures of the “Translassitude Movement,” a fictional Toronto literary scene in the early 2000s, Ah‑Sen offers a contrasting picture of the social lives of writers and what makes them tick: frustration, lust, and revenge.

Kilworthy Tanner is the “pseudobiography” of the successful author “Kilworthy” Tanner Lepoitevin. It’s narrated by Jonno, a musician-cum-writer who has spent a few years as her collaborator and paramour. Throughout his early twenties, Jonno scrapes by, working at a guitar shop, associating with drug dealers and other ne’er‑do‑wells as he tries to get various bands off the ground. His world shifts when a friend sends him a book by...