Polyamorous Love Song by Jacob Wren

Audiobook Sample:

Finalist for the 2015 ReLit Novel Award

Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2014

From interdisciplinary writer and performer Jacob Wren comes Polyamorous Love Song, a novel of intertwined narratives concerning the relationship between artists and the world. Shot through with unexpected moments of sex and violence, readers will become acquainted with a world that is at once the same and opposite from the one in which they live. With a diverse palette of vivid characters—from people who wear furry mascot costumes at all times, to a group of ‘New Filmmakers’ that devises increasingly unexpected sexual scenarios with complete strangers, to a secret society that concocts a virus that only infects those on the political right—Wren’s avant-garde Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose) will appeal to readers with an interest in the visual arts, theatre, and performance of all types.

Praise for Polyamorous Love Song:

“Polyamorous Love Song sets up every human being as an artist—oversexed, furry and holding a gun—to play through wicked palindromes of sex performance and political protest. This book notably asks: Are we all pretending? Wren mines the ethical implications of both hidden literature and mass entertainment. Reading it, I wondered why I wasn’t more afraid.” —Tamara Faith Berger, author of Maidenhead

“Everything Jacob Wren touches interests me, excites me—he’s both sophisticated and innocent in attitude—he’s a kind of wise old man and open-hearted lover. With his vivacious ideas, word play, and the serious and inane served up on a plate—Wren lifts my spirits, intellectual and other, because to know he’s writing so beautifully in this mad, sad world is a wonderful thing.” —Lynne Tilman

Press Coverage:

“Polyamorous Love Song is… surreal, transgressive, and unsettling. It has the capacity to not only deliver itself like a punch to the gut but also leave a lingering sting.” —Quill & Quire (starred review)

“Polyamorous Love Song is a dream-like novel about the meaning and value of dreams, a convention-busting novel about breaking social and aesthetic norms.” —The Globe and Mail

“At once thoughtful, thrilling, terrifying, comedic and disturbing.” —Cult MTL

“Polyamorous Love Song is a fine dystopic vision of a future already here.” —Nomadic Press

“The success of Wren’s book is that it manages to straddle the thin line between satire and possibility.” —backlisted

“A thrilling though at times disturbing read, it is flirtatious and experimental, unconcerned with literary convention, and unapologetically playful yet utterly serious.” —Montreal Review of Books

“No matter how elaborate the storyline, nor how deep the reverie, [Polyamorous Love Song’s] abiding concern seems to be with fiction’s potential to make life more interesting. This time it does.” —Maisonneuve

“Polyamorous Love Song ... is a truly exciting novel. This is partially because its 185 pages are chock full of sex, guns, revolutionary orgies, secret societies, and terrorist cell groups dressed in mascot costumes, but it is also because it is a boldly experimental novel that does not sacrifice clarity in its pursuit of intelligence or earnestness.” —Andre Forget for The Town Crier

“The eerie magic of Love Song is its capacity, against all odds and attempts at alienation, to make the reader invest in a cast of well-wrought characters with compelling drives and desires.” —Domenica Martinello for The Town Crier

“Wren’s fiction depicts a world in which everything is mediated by the political, a thrilling and terrifying world in which conceptual art bleeds into an underground nexus of conspiracy and intrigue and where the lines between life and performance are dissolved” —Biblioasis Blog

“Polyamorous Love Song reinvigorates metafiction by prompting the reader to create with the writer.” —subTerrain

“Polyamorous Love Song invites a reader to think about how an artist selects which reality to make fiction, and the possible fallout of that choice.” —Heather Cromarty for All Lit Up

“Examining Art in a Larger Sense: Jacob Wren’s Polyamorous Love Song —The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog

“A Terrible, Even Paralyzing Goal: Talking Narratives with Jacob Wren” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

On What Jacob Wren reads and Why He Writes —All Lit Up

Jacob Wren Speaking with Arielle Bernstein —The Saturday Rumpus

CanLit Rewind: A spotlight on Polyamorous Love Song —All Lit Up

Jacob Wren creates literature, performances, and exhibitions. His books include Unrehearsed Beauty (1998), Families Are Formed Through Copulation (2007), and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed (2010). As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART, he co-created the performances En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize (1998), and the HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series including Individualism Was a Mistake (2008), The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (2011), and Every Song I’ve Ever Written (2013). International collaborations include a stage adaptation of the 1954 Wolfgang Koeppen novel Der Tod in Rom (Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2007); An Anthology of Optimism (co-created with Pieter De Buysser / Campo, Ghent, 2008); Big Brother Where Art Thou? (a project entirely on Facebook, co-created with Lene Berg / OFFTA / PME-ART, 2011); and, No Double Life For The Wicked (co-created with Tori Kudo / The Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan, 2012.) Wren travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art. Follow Wren at http://www.radicalcut.blogspot.com and http://jacobwren.tumblr.com.