Dominoes at the Crossroads

by Kaie Kellough

In Dominoes at the Crossroads Kaie Kellough maps an alternate nation—one populated by Caribbean Canadians who hopscotch across the country. The characters navigate race, class, and coming-of-age. Seeking opportunity, some fade into the world around them, even as their minds hitchhike, dream, and soar. Some appear in different times and hemispheres, whether as student radicals, secret agents, historians, fugitive slaves, or jazz musicians.

From the cobblestones of Montreal’s Old Port through the foliage of a South American rainforest; from a basement in wartime Paris to a metro in Montreal during the October Crisis; Kellough’s fierce imagination reconciles the personal and ancestral experience with the present moment, grappling with the abiding feeling of being elsewhere, even when here.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Canada, Audiobook, Anthologies, School, Race

180 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2020

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories with characters that reappear in subsequent sections and protagonists that tend to sound remarkably similar - which might explain why a writer named Kaie Kellough occasionally pops up as if to remind the reader that it is in fact someone else telling the story.

It is the Caribbean diaspora and how it has long insinuated itself as part of the larger narrative that is Canada.

[BookOfCinz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid collection of stories, some I enjoyed and others I thought, "a wah gwan yasso?" The ones that were good were really good and the ones I did not like I really did not like. I love how the author wrote about Caribbean history, being displace, identity and finding community.

I do recommend reading this over a period of a month because going through all at once may not be the best bet.

Solid collection.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of stories. Different topics, different times and different locales... all engaging and the well drawn places and scenarios very relatable.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 although some stories were solid 4s. An interesting array of short stories about displacement, race, and coming-of-age with a bit of sci-fi and music thrown into the mix.

[erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

started off strong, but the narrator got more and more aggravating. i enjoyed the emphasis on the fact that a story doesn't necessarily need a main character, and the focus of readers on this aspect can result in losing the primary focus of the author's message or intent. some of this did get lost in certain stories, specifically those that required lots of background knowledge the author did not provide. overall a strong novel, beautiful writing.

[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4 stars

'If you are afraid to shoot the general, you are afraid to be free.'

Kellough's stories ring with history, a speculative future, and an understanding of how we have existed in places that have always abused, appropriated, and alienated us.

What compelled me most though each story was how Kellough found ways to entwine his characters' dreams, journeys, and ultimate choices to the existence, endurance, and spirit of our ancestors. He uses music, family, inheritance, ambition, and academics to link past to present, to envision a future that is built on the indomitable spirit of those who came before, fighting for their place in the world.

He delves into generational evolution and inheritance, the desire for each generation to be able to reach further than those who came before; the search for identity and self in connection to the land of our ancestors passed and our parents and grandparents; coming of age in a society that has already categorized you; the expression of our bonds in revolutionary acts and arts.

The opening story was also impactful as it postulated a present that we are currently living, where the landscapes of cities and societies have changed so much yet remain the same in terms of barriers and expectations. A very insightful collection of stories that speaks to Kellough's observance and understanding.


Kellough did a great job of weaving the existence of Black individuals in spaces and places that were not necessarily welcoming, but where they persevered, were aware and thrived.

[memegwan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn’t get attached to the stories that much…

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recueil de nouvelles unique en son genre, Kellough retrace l'histoire des immigrants carribéens, africains et haïtiens à travers des portraits futuristes de la ville, en utilisant une contrefactuelle histoire, en mettant à profit sa grande culture musicale pour nous éduquer en même temps que ses personnages avancent.

Pour les initiés comme moi, ayez un outil de recherche à proximité puisque ce livre regorge de références sur lesquelles nourrir nos cerveaux, notre culture générale ainsi que nos a priori.

[Barbara McVeigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven’t heard me sing the praises of Kaie Kellough’s short story collection, you haven’t been close enough. OK, maybe it’s that social distancing thing keeping us apart…

IMHO, this collection could be called, “The Hidden History of Black Canadians”. I kept Google at the ready while reading Kellough’s stories as he drops names (Paul Bogle), snippets of news (the Nubian statues in a Montreal hotel), and the name of a town just past Dundalk, first settled by African-Americans before the community disappeared. (I’m not going to tell you the name; you’ll just have to read the story.) For me, the most resonant stories are those infused with the possibilities of Afrofuturism, where Marie-Joseph Angélique is a hero and where the marginalized become society’s saviours.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

"I try not to emphasize that the story is going anywhere specific. It is simply moving, when it wants to - or is it just the world that is moving, and people are caught in that movement - and my job, as amanuensis, is to allow the world to move through me ..."

Kellough has performed that job exquisitely. Characters and communities intersect in revealing ways, borders are crossed and re-crossed, worlds collide - and we learn so much, in sometimes unexpected and frequently beautiful ways.

[Sharlot Ivanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read every story. Well written, but so, so boring.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars for the first story, La question ordinaire et extraordinaire.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I wanted to stand on the mezzanine and play – not a melody, but a stream of expletive notes, ones that would crack the stones of Parliament, sunder the foundations from the earth. The buildings would tremble, lean, and in a blurred streak of color, slide into the canal."

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

La questions ordinaire et extraordinaire
A miniature dystopian story about Montreal, where the climate crisis changes the dynamics of the city. I liked it. We often joke about how places will be future waterfront locations due to earthquakes, rising water, etc. This story writes a plausible version of that.

Porcelain Nubians
First person narrative of a man and his family history, and the gentrification of areas in Montreal. I liked the storytelling in this one. How he tells some of his history and his present and his future.

Shooting the General
I feel like I missed something in this story, once I got to the end it assumed I knew something, and I didn't. Didn't like this one.

Dominoes at the Crossroads
A couple visits his home island of Grenada. This story was okay. I think it is a common feeling to want to fit in where you come from but you've expanded and you don't fit anymore.

Witness
Brother visit to Guyana. Another one where I feel like I missed the point at the end. Didn't like it.

Petit Morronage
A Jazz artist thinks and plays tenor sax. I liked it. It was immersive, into an unknown world for me, but it gave glimpses into a Caribbean cultural heritage, a musicians tour, a jazz artist, a world that isn't middle class. There was a glimpse into a past story, and the author made a personal appearance.

We Free Kings
Is there really such a thing as upper West Van? He lives in BC but grew up in Montreal. He tells a story about his youth. This one was okay. It's theme was unappealing for me.

Navette
A Haitian driving a taxi in Montreal. Reminiscing. Thinking. I didn't like it. It was uninteresting

Capital
About a painting and a laugh. It was okay but really felt like it lacked a purpose.

Ashes and Juju
A film idea, another reference to a previous story. It was okay but banal.

Smoke and Thundered
A story of the author, by the author.

Notes of a Hand
I found this one incomprehensible.

[Joel Asa Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a worthwhile collection of short stories. The various characters all pretty much speak with the same voice and for the most part share overlapping experiences as African or Caribbean immigrants in Canada. Nonetheless that voice is interesting, thoughtful and expressed clearly and poetically.

The author himself appears in occasional cameos that are a tad distracting and sometimes feel like a self-conscious attempt to define his own legacy.

[Arin Goswami · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of short stories that was on the Giller Prize Longlist this year. The stories centre around the Caribbean diaspora here in Canada, focusing on the revolutionary / Marxist leanings of several Caribbean independence struggles (including Haiti, Cuba, and Guyana).

[Cynthia Jimenez · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars* “without that anonymous service there would be no narrative movement. there would be no consciousness. there would be no world”
=> some stories i liked, hard to keep track of stories because of how each each narrative lacked a unique voice, they all kinda of blended together

[Abbygael · Rating 2 out of 5]

“I had outlived that memory, that nostalgia.”

Was confusing with the timelines and a little too descriptive. My favourite short story was Shooting the General!

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved a few stories. Skimmed over others. Lost track of characters enough to not really see how the books intertwined.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the reader notices first about Kaie Kellough’s relentlessly fascinating short fiction collection, Dominoes at the Crossroads, is its bold, subversive nonconformity. The first story, “La question ordinaire et extraordinaire,” is written in the form of celebratory remarks delivered on the occasion of the 475th anniversary of Montreal’s founding and makes reference to the speaker’s “great great grandfather, Kaie Kellough.” The speaker is concerned with the history of Montreal’s black communities, specifically the fate of a slave named Marie-Joseph Angélique, who was executed in 1734, accused of setting a fire, an act of rebellion against the institution of slavery that destroyed much of the city. The stories that follow are set in Montreal and several Caribbean locales, and often allude to the African origins of blacks who by various means—circular or direct—were conveyed to colonial Ville Marie against their will or else emigrated much later and by choice to Canada and chose Montreal as their destination. Kellough’s narrators are wanderers and searchers. They are articulate, restlessly curious, culturally aware and concerned with origins and pathways to identity. They are musicians, writers, intellectuals or just ordinary people exploring, questioning and, in some cases, seeking to revise conventionally held beliefs regarding who they are and where they come from. There is little in these stories that is straightforward. Kaie Kellough’s fictional landscape is one in which the past exerts a strong influence on the present, thematic and dramatic lines are blurred, meaning is multifarious and sometimes elusive. What actually happens in these pages is open to interpretation and seems to depend greatly upon context, perspective, and how open the reader might be to accept uncomfortable truths about racial injustice and its continuing impact on historical and personal destinies. Despite the challenges it poses, Kellough’s book is absolutely engrossing and often suspenseful. His prose is sharp and witty, evocative and lyrical. Dominoes at the Crossroads not only invites but demands repeated readings: to fully appreciate the author’s intentions and to penetrate the layers upon which he has constructed these vivid, audacious, poignant dramas.

[Jane Mulkewich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was on the 2020 Giller long list, which is how it came to my attention. A collection of stories, many of them situated in Montreal but one (titled "Capital") in Ottawa contemplating the painting "The Death of General Wolfe", and some stories touch down in Toronto or across the prairies to Calgary, where the author was raised ("Smoke that Thundered" may be the most autobiographical, particularly as it explains about his name Kaie, and also a great story about what it feels like to go "home" to Guyana as a young man when he had never been to that country before). The stories are all written in the first person, but from so many varied points of view - in some stories he is Haitian, in one he is from Senegal in Africa, and in other stories he has heritage from Grenada or Jamaica and St. Vincent. I waver between thinking his self-referential material is brilliant or overly pretentious... like his first story which is written centuries into the future and reviews his current work, or a story about a musician from Ontario with a saxophone which says "The sound poet Kaie Kellough, who is originally from Calgary, was on the panel. He was working on a collection of narrative essays about incidents he'd experienced on tour...". Probably any of these stories could be read on its own, but taken as a collection it does indeed run the gamut between past, present and future, "through the eyes of jazz musicians, hitchhikers, quiet suburbanites, student radicals, secret agents, historians, and their fugitive ancestors" (as it says on the dust cover), with race and the black experience in Canada woven through all of the stories.

[Enid Wray · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I really did like these stories I found myself picking them up and putting them down, repeatedly. Something just wasn’t holding - demanding - my attention. I will admit to being a bit put off by the first ‘story’... the fact of feeling the need to write a story to explain what was to come. The whole structure that was established was an unnecessary conceit.

The stories themselves are smart, turning the tables on the conventional narrative, challenging the status quo, never actually quite what they appear to be. The way the stories move back and forth through time and space really helps to convey how identity is constructed over generations… and the periodic punctuations of unexpected violence underscore the impact of intergenerational trauma.

Yet it is this same movement in time and space which I found to be quite dislocating and which made it hard for me to stay with the stories as I read them. Paradox?

I was quite taken by the story titled ‘Petit Marronage’... where we are transported by the saxophone and the power of musical stories. One of the central questions of the entire collection is laid out quite clearly on page 85: ‘How to fuse African American (musical) sensibility with a Caribbean one and how to enact fusion in a Canadian context.’

I think this is a collection I need to come back to, to let percolate in my mind and perhaps re-read in a little while.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this book! Each story explored identity, history and coming of age in such a beautiful and poignant way. I love how Kaie Kellough explores Quebec's Black history, as well as its Afro-Caribbean community. I also love how Kaie Kellough is a huge music lover, and utilizes aspects of sound and rhythm to express emotions in his stories. Finally, I loved how the last story was a personal narrative of Kaie's experiences of being the only student of colour in his school in Calgary, and how his reactive nature to the injustices he had faced led to his family taking him to Guyana to explore his roots. I loved this autobiographical exploration of culture, identity and feeling at a constant "crossroad". This book was engaging, intelligent and superbly written. So far, I must say this has been my favourite book I have read this year!

[Byron Rempel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this exploration by Montrealer Kaie Kellough - he explores himself, his past, his Caribbean and Guyanese roots, his future, his imagination, and ends up at a place way beyond himself. I know him as a sound poet, but here in prose his writing is self-assured and confident, even though the subject is often anything but. Heartening to see hear and feel, a "small" book, from a "small" press, a huge achievement.

[Alexander Oster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted this book to be great; it felt a little undercooked as a reader.

I liked the multiple historical perspectives, and really dug the Montreal & Concordia scenes especially. I found the formal allusions to jazz and poetry exciting, but felt they drew away from the narratives' overall impact. Simply put, I was interested in knowing more about all the characters and contexts, but didn't think the author did enough to interlock them. Then again, I don't listen to much jazz.

[Isabela Antunes · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

I definitely enjoyed the collection of short stories. All the stories were 110% coherent - which I am a ginormous fan of. I rounded it up to four stars solely because I wish I had read it over a longer period of time so I could have just sat and thought about each story. Kaie Kellough is a master of words! I would recommend if you're a fan of critical analysis and character-driven plot!

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!

There are some really interesting stories in Dominoes at the Crossroads. I especially liked the way the author wrote himself into some of the futuristic tales as a historic chronicler of the Montreal region. Pretty interesting idea. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys short stories, especially those that deal with society, race, and other weighty topics.

[Aresteanu Viorika · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that fascinate, a journey though the veins of slaves descenders, the hurt and the suffering imbued in every cell of the author, a feel of collective drama, a fly in time, jumping from a tribe member to another, crossing the time frontier looking for healing, a mesmerizing journey, a literary way to scream I can't breathe ! Amazing book ! Vera Oren, Montreal

[Gayle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of short, startling, stories of racism and dreams. I liked some of his imaginative stories of the future. Whereas some were confusing, so I didn't "get" his message. He expressed his frustration with having encountered racism again and again. I certainly have a better understanding after reading this book.

[Brook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written and poetic, Dominoes at the Crossroads is a collection of short stories and essays that all fit together. The author has an incredible grasp on language and flow and its obvious in the writing. However, some of the stories didn’t hook me and felt a bit out of place.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review