Walkups (novel)

The format and structure of the novella is unconventional, written in extremely short chapters with only two recurring characters and interspersed with enigmatic black and white photographs taken by the author, and artist Charles Chalmers.

Walkups is a novella that takes urban architecture—particularly Montreal row-house architecture—as its primary subject. All chapters, titled only by an address, take place with the walls of different apartments, while the one recurring address, referred to only as the Apts d'amours returns us to the central narrative of the unnamed narrator and his love interest, Jane, a biology student who lives upstairs from him in the same building.

As literary critic Kevin Connolly points out in his article on Walkups in Toronto's eye weekly, Walkups shares some similarities with work of Mark Danielewski and Roman Polanski's film, The Tenant.^[1] The novel depicts the claustrophobia and cabin fever associated with cold northern climes, as well as the deep psychological weight of personal and public history as represented by our mundane living spaces.

On one hand Walkups acts as a kind of tour guide to the various neighbourhoods of Montreal and a documentary of various, while simultaneously telling a story of a love affair within the walls of an apartment building that is seemingly alive.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Walkups (novel).

• Review at Montreal Review of Books
• Review at The Danforth Review