A comic statement on the beautiful waywardness of life. Built on scenes of discovery and error, the novel satirizes the transactional view of human relations that has elbowed its way into our lives by way of contemporary political discourse.

It is built on scenes of discovery and error, and the novel satirizes the transactional view of human relations that has elbowed its way into our lives by way of contemporary political discourse. Set in the 1980s before cell phones, personal computers, and Facebook "likes," a comic tone pervades a serious landscape onto which characters attempt to bring personal meaning.

The protagonist, Lucien, is a marine engineer on a Canadian tanker. While on one — month leave in Halifax, he meets Olivia, a brilliant philosophy student at Dalhousie University, who takes an immediate dislike to him What begins as mutual antipathy changes when they discover how compatible their oddities are.

Charged by Olivia not to say he loves her, Lucien returns to sea and a job characterized by its plodding predictability. When he learns from a French fortuneteller that he must "Avoid waters. Waters will kill you," he discovers not everything in his life is negotiable, including his feelings for Olivia. (From Black Moss Press)

André Narbonne is a Canadian professor and author. His short stories have won the Atlantic Writing Competition, the FreeFall Prose Contest and the David Adams Richards Prize. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Windsor and is the fiction editor of the Windsor Review. Narbonne's poetry collection, You Were Here, was published in 2016. His short story collection, Twelve Miles to Midnight, was a 2017 finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Lucien & Olivia is his debut novel.

Lucien & Olivia was on the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.