“I like books that come from a very ‘internal’ place and are reckless in some way,” says Montreal author Guillaume Morissette.

Fittingly, Guillaume’s debut novel, New Tab, is autobiographical. About a 26-year-old video game designer in Montreal who is attempting to reset his life, the book veers between disillusionment, self-destruction, Facebook chats, bilingualism, good parties, bad parties, backyard cinema, and more.

Writes Quill and Quire: “New Tab astutely captures the ennui, isolation, and disengagement of a generation that has been emotionally dismantled by the Internet, then set adrift in a world in which everything is connected and everyone is alone.”

For his part, Guillaume’s video game career ended after, on a whim, he applied to Concordia University to study creative writing. “My mother tongue is French, so I didn’t have a portfolio of English writing to submit,” he recalls. “I half-assed something together in a few days and sent it in and was accepted somehow.”

I Am My Own Betrayal, Guillaume’s previous book of stories and poems, is a collection about “owl people, awkwardness, Facebook, groundhogs, terrible personal decisions, videogames, coping mechanisms, girly arms and cat seizures,” his website says.

Website: guillaumemorissette.com