Phototaxis

Phototaxis, by the Canadian writer Olivia Tapiero, is a novel that oozes, much like the rotting meat strewn across its unnamed cityscape. Translated from the French by Kit Schluter, it follows a cast of characters that includes classical pianist Théo Schultz, a man addicted to both snuff films and the more metaphorical death drive that undergirds the artistic will, who eventually throws himself off a building.

Canadian writer Tapiero’s narratively opaque but politically acute English-language debut… is a confrontational but eminently quotable text. This cyclone of art, destruction, and nonconformity impresses.

Phototaxis is written from the precise point where everything falls down. It is a poetic tale of disgust, of revolt, of love.

Tapiero represents the modern Western city through a stream of consciousness interiority that toggles between multiple characters. Like the best modernist prose, she shows us both the objecthood of people and the way in which external objects manifest a latent social subjectivity.

Apocalypses are never something we wish for—they’re hands we’re dealt. Phototaxis shows us how we might play them.

Allusive, polyvocal, dreamlike—Phototaxis is a haunting collection of responses to crisis: that of ecological decay and disturbance, political and social repression, wealth inequality, and existence itself.