The Music Game

Clermont’s charming debut follows three French-Canadian millennial women and their youthful, romantic coterie of leftist intellectuals. There is Sabrina, who dreams big but ends up at dead-end service jobs; Céline, the MA student whose bourgeois parents read Harraway, Derrida, and Malcolm X; and Julie, the girl with the broken family who aspires to be a tattoo artist. The three of them are idealistic and share a commitment to revolutionary politics, but as their stories unfold, they are repeatedly disillusioned by the world. For Sabrina, romances with older men lead to realizations of her young ignorance. Céline, while interviewing for an escort job, finds out Julie’s stepfather gets sexual favors via the agency. Later, Sabrina falls in love with a punk rocker in California named Jess, who fights a losing battle over squatting rights for a community of outcasts in Oakland, but their relationship sours as Jess’s activist spirit wanes. Though the angsty rants can grow repetitive, the author does a great job developing the characters, and their youthful sincerity feels genuine. This adds up to a heartfelt story of friendship. (Feb.)