Pillow

Literary crime novel populated by French Surrealist authors of the twenties; characters include imagined versions of André Breton, Georges Bataille, Antonin Artaud, Guillaume Apollinaire (changed to be an old woman), Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon (changed to be a young woman with cool hair), Jacques Prevert and Michel Simon.Pillow is a twist on the anti-hero that looms so large in the cultural imagination right now (Tao Lin's novels, HBO series including Breaking Bad and The Knick). In fact, he's an anti-anti-hero: a sweet, pleasant person with an original mind who nonetheless engages in sketchy and immoral behaviour.Written in the weirdo-whimsical vein of, say, Miranda July or Sheila Heti, moreso than the tough men despairing things in short sentences vein of, say, Dennis Lehane, which is what you usually get in literary crimeland. With echoes of an Elmore Leonard thriller: funny, and driven by colorful characters.Boxing subculture is well-connected and generally hungry for reasonably intelligent writing.Author's sister is Claire Battershill, author of Circus (McClelland & Stewart, 2014) winner of the CBC Literary Award for Short Fiction.