Set in Montreal in the 1980s, The Origin of Species tells the story of thirty-something Alex Fratarcangeli (I can't even pronounce it myself, he admits to an acquaintance), plagued by a familiar sense of being a fraud in all aspects of his life, from his professional ambitions to his romantic involvements. Alex is by all accounts an unexceptional man, save for the fact that he is haunted by an extraordinary experience in the Galapagos Islands, the consequences of which threaten to upend the precarious balance of his ordinary life.