Search results for ""author aleshia jensen""

Mathieu Poulin brings us an action comedy of a novel, starring big-budget, explosion-happy movie director Michael Bay. What if Bay were, against all odds, a misunderstood genius right up there with the likes of Plato, Sartre, and Nietzsche? What if his films were more than just Baydiocre, high-grossing box-office successes held in low esteem by most movie critics? What if Bad Boys was a film about decolonization? What if The Rock was about failing to be recognized by one's peers? If Armageddon was about a post-human future? And Pearl Harbor was a reflection on the freedom afforded an artist when striving to transform fact into fiction? Poulin takes his hypothesis and runs with it. Bayhem ensues as our leading man sets out in hot pursuit of the truth, finding more questions than answers between epic car chases and sexy love interests. Who are his real parents and why did they abandon him? Who keeps following him? Did someone intentionally try to poison him, aware of his deathly allergy to sesame? And most importantly: What is meaning?

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A 32-year-old man diagnosed with mental illness puts an end to his life. Questions spring to mind. Could he have been saved? What health services did he get? Were they sufficient? Helpful? Empathetic? What led to the tragedy? How can it be avoided in the future? Is our mental health system up to modern challenges? Why is it taboo to talk about psychosis, schizophrenia, suicide? Have antipsychotics developed over the past 70 years helped? Or are they just another straitjacket to keep the mentally ill out of the way?Ferid Ferkovic, the author's son, committed suicide a few days after being refused admission to the psychiatric ward of a Montreal hospital. From the very first symptoms until his tragic end, Ferid and his family dealt with vague and changing diagnoses, antipsychotics with devastating side effects, insensitive and non-empathetic health care professionals, and a shocking lack of information about external resources. They quickly learned that their opinions and ideas were simply unwelcome. For Sadia Messaili, the suicide of her son, who immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 12, is the starting point in this moving and challenging quest for truth about our failing mental-health system, justice, and above all better ways to rekindle hope for people suffering mental illness and for their families.'Ferid's death was not the end,' says Sadia Messaili. 'He has fought through me, and the fight is not over!'

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Winter blankets Montreal, while a bookseller and her lover dream of Prague. As the narrator's open marriage becomes the subject of a novel, reality blurs with fiction, and she tries to reconcile the need to create with the desire for love and sex. Written in stark, spare prose, Prague is an introspective and intimate account of the making of a novel from life.

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