A QUINCUNX

BY ANDRE ALEXIS

(Illustration by Linda Watson)

A quincunx is an arrangement of plants or objects with one element at each of four corners of an imagined square and one in the centre. In his difficult but fascinating essay “The Garden of Cyrus,” the Jacobean essayist Thomas Browne makes a case for the mystical power and significance of this arrangement. For instance, quoting from biblical and classical sources, Browne suggests that the vegetation in the garden of Eden would have been planted in this shape. Whether or not God – if God exists – had a quincunx in mind when He created the gardens in Eden, my quincunx is inspired by – and grateful for – Thomas Browne’s essay.

So, the five novels in my “quincunx” can be thought of as “plants” rooted in the imagination: my imagination, principally, but also the cultural imagination, as each novel represents a distinct genre of novel, a different kind of “plant.”

The novels aren’t wholly disparate, though. Each of the novels deals with a similar – though not identical – set of themes: God, Chance, Power, Love, Hate, Place. They deal with other themes and ideas as well, but these are the principal ones that obsessed me while I was writing the five novels.

The novels in this sequence of five do not tell a single story. Each tells its own story. If you read them “in order” – that is, a, b, c, d, e – you will not find a beginning, a middle, and an end to a single, overarching narrative. Rather, you’ll find recurring characters, recurring situations, recurring locations, recurring patterns, and, of course, recurring themes and ideas.

If you read the sequence out of order – b, a, d, c, e, for instance – it will be like approaching the arrangement from a unique angle. In the end, you’ll see all the “plants,” but you’ll likely have a different impression of the whole.

At the end of Days By Moonlightt, it’s noted that the novel

        … is not a work of realism. It’s not a work that uses the imagination to show the real, but one that uses the real to show the imagination.

This is true of A Quincunx as a whole.

PRESS QUOTES

“Alexis’s latest project is a five-part series of novels that he describes as a “quincunx.” Beginning with Pastoral (2014) and continuing through Fifteen Dogs (2015) and The Hidden Keys (2016), each book has attempted to resuscitate a forgotten or neglected genre: the pastoral, the apologue, the quest narrative. But while his work deals in paradoxes and tropes borrowed from long-dead thinkers, Alexis has time and again proven himself to be a provocative and modern thinker; his work feels ever current, even as it delivers all the humor and warmth of a well-told tale.” —Windham Campbell Citation

Fifteen Dogs

"What does it mean to be alive? To think, to feel, to love and to envy? André Alexis explores all of this and more in the extraordinary Fifteen Dogs, an insightful and philosophical meditation on the nature of consciousness. It’s a novel filled with balancing acts: humour juxtaposed with savagery, solitude with the desperate need to be part of a pack, perceptive prose interspersed with playful poetry. A wonderful and original piece of writing that challenges the reader to examine their own existence and recall the age old question, what’s the meaning of life?" —The 2015 Giller jury citation

"A novel about a pack of talking dogs, you say? The very idea will most likely breed thoughts of insufferable whimsy, like those paintings of mutts playing poker, or of more or less effective satire, in the vein of Animal Farm. It’s a grand thing, then, that this spry novel by Canadian André Alexis spends its 160 pages repeatedly defying expectations . .. I’m far from being a dog person, but as a book person I loved this smart, exuberant fantasy from start to finish." —Jonathan Gibbs, The Guardian

"Alexis manages to encapsulate an astonishing range of metaphysical questions in a simple tale about dogs that came to know too much. The result is a delightful juxtaposition of the human and canine conditions, and a narrative that, like just one of the dogs, delights in the twists and turns of the gods' linguistic gift." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Over the course of this novel, slim yet epic in scope, Alexis chronicles the fates of these strangely afflicted beasts, shifting from thought experiment to comic parable to something more delicate, laden with detail, discovery and emotional nuance." —The Globe & Mail

"[Alexis] devises an inventive romp through the nature of humanity in this beautiful, entertaining read … A clever exploration of our essence, communication, and how our societies are organized. " —Kirkus Reviews

Pastoral

"This novel’s pleasures indeed include a rich sense of place, but that sense comes without sentimentality, and that place is something one might just as easily flee from as call home. Pastoral beauty is certainly on offer, but Alexis’ fluid, evocative descriptions of the rural wonders that surround Barrow are much more than nostalgia for a childhood idyll or mere reverie for revere’s sake – they constitute the very heart of Pastoral’s unresolved/unresolvable crisis of faith." —National Post

"It’s been clear since his debut novel, Childhood, that Alexis is one of our most distinctive and exacting prose stylists, and at its highest pitch, as in the breathtaking final paragraph, these are sentences that attain the level of the best music." —Montreal Gazette

Days by Moonlight

“A mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief, managing to transform its inarticulable and symbolic weight into a finely wrought literary work.” —Quill & Quire

“A great novel doesn’t try to answer questions, but, like Days by Moonlight, complicates them. It’s for the reader to puzzle over. An exasperated character asks, 'Who knows what the writer believes?'" —The Globe & Mail

“What’s so enjoyable about Days by Moonlight is that it turns the act of reading into traveling, and traveling into a constant swaying between wonder and bewilderment where travelers and readers alike are held in balance mainly by the illusion that what they experience is the world and who they are is being part of it.” —Full Stop Magazine

The Hidden Keys

"The mystery itself does not disappoint, though the events that lead up to the reveal are as much of a gift as the endpoint itself. This unique adventure is a joyful and intelligent undertaking." —Foreword Reviews

"This gorgeously written, funny adventure tale will keep readers up finishing it while also quietly breaking their hearts with Alexis's keen observations of people, kindness, and cruelty. " —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[An] intellectual adventure yarn . . . Great fun. " —The Wall Street Journal

"Even though the book is an old-fashioned quest yarn, Alexis's immense talent gives it an archetypal patina, glossing characters with shades of honor and subtlety that might have been missed in lesser hands. " —Kirkus Reviews

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His most recent novel, Days by Moonlight, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Fifteen Dogs won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Asylum, Pastoral, The Hidden Keys, and The Night Piece: Collected Stories. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize.

QUINCUNX BOOKS