The Wanton Troopers by Alden Nowlan (re-relased Reader’s Guide Edition)

Goose Lane (2009), 297 pages

Goose Lane recently re-released the legendary Alden Nowlan’s first novel, The Wanton Troopers, after discovering its missing last page. You can read about that unique story, as well as the remarkable life story of Alden Nowlan by clicking here. This re-released reader’s guide edition comes with features like a sincere afterword by David Adams Richards, and a 36-page long interview with Nowlan, that is quite honestly among my favourite author interviews I’ve ever read. The book is worth it for the interview alone.

The Wanton Troopers is a novel in line with of Wayne Johnston’s The Story of Bobby O’Malley or Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, except there is less humour and a more poetic prose. Troopers precedes them both and relies more heavily on the power of language and the irrevocable potency of moments. It should be noted up front that Nowlan was primarily a poet, a renowned poet. When you hear of a novel written by a poet, you expect a certain brilliance in the writing itself, and in the case of this novel, he follows through. There is a consistent attention to detail that boasts itself in the very opening line: “It was raining so hard that Kevin thought God must have torn a hole in the sky and let all the rivers of heaven spill upon earth. The cold spring rain hit the roof with the force of gravel.”

The backcover describes the novel very well: Kevin O’Brien is caught between heaven and hell, torn between the tenderness of his young, adulterous mother and the brutality of his work-gnarled, drunken father. Kevin’s world is unrelenting: bone-crushing poverty, bullying, his first adolescent yearnings, and the fire of sin. Yet, in Kevin’s imagination, there is hope.

It is in Nowlan’s capturing of moments, most notably the shared moments of peace and intimacy between Kevin and his mother, where this book shines. Brightly. As an example, speaking of his mother washing him, “The wind howled like a drowning beast. Inside, there was the warmth and light and music of his mother’s hands and body … he might have been part of her body. She washed him as she washed her own hands. He was, all of him, hers: not the smallest part of him belonged any longer to himself. And in this surrender, there was pervasive peace.” That is one of many passages of Kevin clinging to moments of tenderness and love in an otherwise hostile home, in an ensnaring town that breaks men like horses. And it is no coincidence that during these moments of shared peace and intimacy, his father is never around, or he pipes up to ruin the moment.  His father is always skilfully and intentionally portrayed with beastial imagery: always “roaring” or “glaring” or “growling” but never simply saying or asking, always described like a wretched animal — “Judd O’Brien’s arms were bludgeons, and his horny, yellow fingernails reminded Kevin of hooves.” This was in harsh contrast to his angelic mother and their shared, ethereal moments. “His relationship with his father attained its epitome through the strap,” and these violent scenes are the ones that linger. The ones that taint everything, as Kevin periodically despises himself and even his mother. “He hated her when she caressed him before his father, for he knew that Judd despised all caresses as symptoms of weakness.” 

But it’s the glimmer of resilience in this story, and the humanity of it, the real life story of Alden Nowlan, and rooting for alter-ego Kevin that resonates. Nothing captures this sentiment more than Kevin’s symbolic admiration, on pages 21 and 22, as he identifies with beaten horses. “Something in him responded to the secret light he saw in their eyes, the freedom and grace that could never be wholly destroyed by work or punishment but ended only with death.”

This novel  is tender, it’s bold, it’s beautifully written. It affects you in a very important way. It hurts to read; it’s a pleasure to read. It is honest and resonates as it cuts through to the core of humanity and the need for human connection and self-discovery in the least fertile of places.  That said, some readers will find that, in places, the novel loses momentum into a questionable digression. And, in parts, Kevin’s dated and ineffective dialogue of “Gee” and “Gosh”come off as weak, mismatched responses to pivotal, intense moments in the book.

Nowlan’s The Wanton Troopers combines the authenticity of autobiography with a born poet’s lush prose, and the effect is affecting.

House of Anansi Press — Arguably the Hippest Independent Press in Canada — has a Quick Q & A with Salty Ink.

Click Here to read the interview: http://www.anansi.ca/anansi_reader.cfm

The Judge a 2009 Book by Its Cover Competition

- Salty Ink picked the longlist, the general public will vote for the month of February to create a shortlist of three, and a panel will choose a winner in March of 2010.

 - For the month of February, voting is open to the general book-loving public. You can only vote once, but you can vote for up to 3 books,

Click Here to See the Longlist and Vote

Yes, I am being purposefully witty: February’s book of the month is February, but also because the softcover version just hit stores.

As I read February, I was overwhelmed with the sensation that I was, for the first time, reading the work of a fully evolved writer. In terms of bare-bones writing, in terms of sentence-level writing, and how well an author crafts a sentence to capture a moment in words: There is no one else in the country who can touch Lisa Moore’s elegant rendering of language. Lisa made her mark with Open, and Alligator got all the attention it deserved. But with February, she’s peaked. She’s distinticve, and what she does with language is nothing less than dazzling, and then there is her uncanny ability to inhabit every pore and sinew of her endearingly human characters, and project their stories up off the pages in the most meaningful ways, with her tender, visceral diction. What she does with language is pure art. Pure innovation. With all the right words and nuances, moments and memories are fleshed out and almost x-rayed, until the reader is made to experience her protagonist’s very core and consciousness. Through her rendering of the main character, Helen O’mara, I have felt the irrevocable and deflating loss of a spouse. Lucid is the word I am after, her scenes dance right off the pages and all over your heart. Especially when you have the chance to hear her read her own work. 

If my words aren’t enough, the backcover is graced by the following endorsement from the legendary Richard Ford:  ”Lisa Moore is an astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what’s important in life.” 

February is the story of Helen O’mara, a woman widowed and left to raise her children alone after she losses her beloved Cal the night of the Ocean Ranger disaster, Valentine’s Day, 1982. In no way does Moore exploit, sentimentalize, or overuse that real-life tragedy. Instead, with a truly shocking and core-penetrating skill, she shows us the effect of that loss on Helen. How and why, years later, her mind still trickles back to that ill-fated February. Structurally, February unfolds in a non-chronological order. Helen’s memories, her daily routines of present day life, her watching her grandchildren or helping her son cope with the reality of an estranged, impregnated fling are all happening at once. Moore’s non-linear narrative structure not only makes the book a more engaging read, it also captures how life really works, the reverberations of our past echoing in the present, often at random. Her memories come at random to pierce through the mundane chores of every day life. This is an important work, and perhaps the apex of CanLit, if not simply a shining example of what is meant by creative writing: sentences that evoke emotions in their reader; words strung together with and artful, calculated precision so that a reader feels what they’re reading.

 February earned its way onto numerous “best of 2009″ lists, most notably the  Quill & Quire’s and Globe and Mail’s.

A claim to fame to get your attention: Both Downhill Chance and Sylvanus Now won the prestigious, 15-thousand dollar Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and that’s only getting started on her remarkable writing career.

Halifax’s Donna Morrissey grew up in Newfoundland, where she is so adored there is a commemorative plaque in her hometown of Beaches. All four of her novels have been remarkably well received by readers, critics, and award jurors alike, and now, if you’ve missed out on any of them, Penguin has just re-designed and re-launched them all for you. They’re striking, enticing, and have special features . If you haven’t read any or all of her novels yet, you are missing out, and now is the time. Her works are an international success, having been sold into Japan, Germany, Sweeden, UK, the US …

Kit’s Law

Selected Recognition:
Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award Prize
Winner of the The American Library Association’s Alex Award
Winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Bequest
Shortlisted for the Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Choice.

Set in a very isolated, roadless Newfoundland outport in the 1950s, Kit’s Law is the story of fatherless fourteen-year-old Kit Pitmann, who, after her grandmother’s sudden death, becomes responsible for her mentally handicapped mother. The three women led a harsh life, but had each other’s love to get them through it. When her grandmother dies, Kit struggles to fend off village busybodies who try to tear her and her mother apart, particularly the Reverend Ropson, who, from the pulpit, decries Josie as the “Gully Tramp.”

“Beautiful … with a poet’s attention to sound … startling, vivid, and expertly crafted.”
- Booklist

“An affecting, haunting, memorable tale by a true, effortless storyteller.”
- Sunday Tribune (Dublin)

Downhill Chance

Winner of the 2003 Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize

Downhill Chance is a story of two Newfoundland families during wartime — the Osmonds and the Gales — brought together by love, yet torn apart by fear and secrets. Job Gale joins the army, leaving his distraught wife and two young daughters behind. When Job returns, he is tortured with a secret shame that shrouds over the family. His young daughter Clair escapes by becoming a teacher at nearby Rocky Head, then falls in love with Luke Osmond, who courts her from afar with a story that reveals his own secret sorrow. Morrissey blends melodrama, gritty realism, and a flair for the comic in this unique novel. At its core is the unravelling of secrets — and what truth ultimately brings to the people who so memorably inhabit these pages.

“So emotionally taut and brilliantly written that you won’t have time to breathe until you leaf over the last page.”
- The Hamilton Spectator

“Downhill Chance is the sort of gothic fiction made familiar by the Brontë sisters, a Wuthering Heights of the craggy coast of Newfoundland.”
- The London Free Press

  
Sylvanus Now

Selected Recognition:
Winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award
Winner of the Atlantic Book Awards Booksellers’ Choice Award
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize

Sylvanus Now is a young fisherman of great charm and strength. His youthful desires are simple: the fine-boned beauty Adelaide. Adelaide, however, has other dreams. She longs to escape the sea, the fish, and the stultifying community in which she lives. Set against the love story of Addie and Sylvanus is the sea on the cusp of cataclysmic change. Caught between his desire to please his wife and his strongly independent nature, Sylvanus must decide what path his future will take.

‘Deft and deliriously romantic … Acute and bleakly funny.”
-The National Post

“There are detailed descriptions in this novel which are dazzlingly authentic. Both physical and emotional landscapes are charted with exquisite care. A splendidly unique novel.”
- Alistair MacLeod, award-winning author of No Great Mischief

What They Wanted

Shortlisted for the 2009 Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award
A Globe and Mail bestseller and top book of 2008

After Sylvie’s father’s heart attack, long-simmering family tensions rise to the fore, and she must confront her estrangement from her mother. She fevers for the larger world, both for herself and her vulnerable brother Chris, who is blessed with artistic talent but frustrates his dreams by going to work on an Albertan oil rig. Sylvie’s mother is furious with Sylvie for enticing Chris away. When Sylvie and her brother journey west to the booming oilfields to earn quick, hard cash, and struggle to find their way, the past impinges on the present until tragedy strikes and their lives are forever changed. Yet, out of pain and piercing grief, there is reconciliation and renewal. This is a novel about guilt, responsibility, tragedy, and the enduring ties of family, this is vintage Donna Morrissey.

“A compassionate, insightful, and gripping look at a family dragged through changing times … grief is so movingly presented that readers will feel it as their own.”
- Winnipeg Free Press  

“Donna Morrissey is an absolute terrific original.”
- David Adams Richards, multi-award-winning author of Mercy Among the Children

Get to Know Donna Morrisey:

Big News, as of Sunday, January 17th: St. John’s, Newfoundland finally has what will hopefully be an annual literary festival. You can see the official site for the Sparks Literary Festival here.  It was really about time for this, and Rita Tremblay and renowned poet and well-regarded professor Mary Dalton is to thank for its conception, as they have been the driving force behind what will now be an annual festival to showcase this province’s finest established and emerging writers. It speaks to the validity of this event that Mary had no trouble finding 16 writers to fill the day-long festival. There will be four panels of four writers, spaced out over the day. They will read from their work and then engage in a Q & A with the audience. Another fun interactive element to this festival is its haiku competition, open to anyone participating: the authors, organizers, and audience. The haiku need only incorporate an image a light, to play off the title of the festival, Sparks. the winner will get a bundle of books.

This year’s Sparks Festival includes: Lynette Adams, Joan Clark, Michael Crummey, Tom Dawe, Randy Drover, Robert Finley, Jessica Grant, Susan Ingersoll, Don McKay, Janet McNaughton, Lisa Moore, Chad Pelley, Stephen Rowe, Leslie Vryenhoek, Russell Wangersky, Patrick Warner.

Schedule

Sunday, January 17, 2010

 Session 1 – 10:30-11:45

Michael Crummey, Lynette Adams, Robert Finley, Janet McNaughton

Lunch break: 12.00-1.00

 Session 2 – 1:00-2:20

Susan Ingersoll, Chad Pelley, Patrick Warner, Jessica Grant

Break: 2:20-2:30: Displays of local literary journals, etc. in lobby. Meet and greet, book signings. 

Session 3 – 2:30-4:00

Leslie Vryenhoek, Tom Dawe, Stephen Rowe, Lisa Moore

Break: 3:50-4:30: Displays of local literary journals, etc. in lobby. Meet and greet, book signings.

Session 4 – 4:30-6:00

Russell Wangersky, Randy Drover, Joan Clark, Don McKay

Announcement of Haiku Competition winner; reading of haiku short list.

 Reception: 6.00 p.m.

January Magazine just did a plug for Clare and Adams’s Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books. (The ultimate coffee table book or gift for Atlantic Canadian book lovers … a phenomenal, well-designed, well-delivered resource every Canadian reader ought to have in their bookcase.)

They worded it so well, and that first sentence there is so very true, that I had to copy and paste:

“Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books is like a blueprint for what provinces, states, regions and even countries should be doing for their literature. In straightforward fashion and in easily accessible language, it rounds up the 100 greatest books of Canada’s huge and literally formidable Atlantic region. Full stop. Then it bundles them all together under a bright, shiny cover, giving a couple of pages and a full color representation to each of the chosen 100 along with a breezy write-up and — voila! — a literary map for anyone who would like to hit all of the regional highlights.”

Lovesongs of Emmanuel Taggart, Syr Ruus

Breakwater Books (2009),  248 pages

Syr Ruus’s Lovesongs of Emmauel Taggart is an off-kilter but ultimately insightful novel that will have its ideal audience reflecting on or relating to its universal story. It stars a well-wrought character, Emmanuel “M” Taggart, whose antics, at times far-fetched but always endearingly human, speak to the universal quest for meaning in modern life. Emmanuel, like far too many of us, is a man boxed in by cubicles and shackled by bad ties and to-do lists that leave no run for play, or possibly even identity. At times that can send a man into moments of introspection, or, in M’s case, a full-on, sad-funny breakdown. This book is a spotlight on a mid-life crisis, done in a fresh, fun way. Taggart does it all: small-scale road trips, new relationships, unfounded infatuations with perfect strangers, mind-numbing introspection, and like so many men in a time of self-examination,he questions the choice of a perfectly good partner like M’s wife, Emily, or, as he more affectionately calls her, “little m.” To quote the book, they call each other “Em & Em. Big M and little m. M&m.” (Aww…)

Considering the caliber of her writing, and the hefty thematic material she handles insightfully, it is hard to believe this is a debut novel. The perk of Lovesongs being a debut is that it takes chances and stretches the bounds of literary fiction in ways that all too often only a first novel dares do. Lovesongs is a well-written little gem, in a style all Ruus’s, that evokes all the senses, at times putting the reader in the character’s body, let alone his head. It’s a compelling, contemporary, and punchy style, without being trendy. It’s catchy and readable. It’s funny. It’s serious. Replete with much life wisdom that isn’t overly heavy-handed or opinionated, just deft and true, and is only occasionally out of context.

It is perfectly normal but tragically human to question your life from time to time, and in the case of Lovesongs of Emmanuel Taggart, it certainly makes for a good book, especially when the writer is one like Ruus, and the main character is a certified hypochondriac with more worries than problems. Syr Ruus plays with the big questions of life in this book, in a way that feels like she has the answers, but holds them back from her fumbling lead character, so that he has to come to the book’s fine closing revelation all his own, as we all do. We can’t change the world, Emmanuel Taggart, but we can change the way we look at it.

The title, by the way, is an homage to T.S Eliot’s epic and much anthologized 1915 poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”  click here to read it.)

 New Brunswick’s literary powerhouse, David Adams Richards, and Nova Scotia / Newfoundland’s acclaimed author and arts activist, Joan Clark, have been named to the Order of Canada. Since 1967, the Order of Canada has been Canada’s system of honouring the importance of a Canadian in any field.

David Adams Richards was named a member of the Order of Canada for ”his contributions to the Canadian literary scene as an essayist, screenwriter and writer of fiction and non-fiction.” He has had an epic writing career with a far- reaching influence on writers in the country (yours truly included: Mercy Among the Children had a profound resonance to it, and was perhaps the most gripping novel I have ever read). His career got started remarkably early, having completed his first novel, The Keeping of Gusties (1970), at twenty years of age. He then started up the infamous Ice House Gang writer’s group, and got serious backing and encouragement by icon Alden Nowlan. Since that time he has built one of the most remarkable writing careers of any Canadian, holding claims to fame such as having won the prestigious GG award for both a fiction and non-fiction title (Nights Below Station Street and Lines on the Water, respectively), and moreover, three more of his novels have been shortlisted for the same award, including Mercy Among the Children, which, among other accomplishments, won the Giller prize, the Canadian Booksellers Association author of the year and fiction book of the year, was shortlisted for several other awards, and was a Canada Reads selection.

Joan Clark was named a member of the Order of Canada  for “her contributions as an author of literature for both children and adults, and as an arts activist who has supported provincial and national cultural organizations for decades.” Joan is a multi-award-winning author of several genres, published all over the world, who got her real start in 1968 with publication of  Girl of the Rockies. Of her long, illustrious career, my favourite work of Joan’s might be the captivating story of “Mad Mory” in An Audience of Chairs, a Globe and Mail book of the year, nominated for the IMPAC award, shortlisted for the Winterset Award, and winner of The Bennington Gate Fiction Award. (Last I heard, Rock Island Productions bought the film rights.) Her career is truly one to admire, I’ve heard nothing but gushing praise of her last two adult novels, Lattitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs, and I love to hear tell of other writers who are obsessive revisers as well. She even went so far as to revise a published work when her 1982 collection of shorts, From a High Thin Wire, was re-released in 2004.

Go buy their novels. Go.

Come, Thou Tortoise (2009)

Jessica Grant

Knopf Canada

432 pages (hardcover)

 Pardon all the adjectives, but this books really is a fresh, innovative, unprecedented, unforgettable gem. Pardon the cliché but I mean it: There is nothing quite like this. The story, the tone, the characters,  the diction, the delivery: all Jessica Grant’s. But I’ll concede, since people demand comparisons, as impossible as they are in this case: Come, Thou Tortoise is everything great about a Miriam Toews novel meeting everything great about the fresh, ultra-modern diction of Burning Rock fiction. Grant’s crisp, accurate descriptions dance the story so vividly off the pages. “Her skin felt like an old elbow,” “Her brown hair makes a beaver’s tail down her back.” The story’s heroine, Audrey Flowers, sees and describes the world in a consistently fresh, unique way: “the wind was flappy,” or “Downtown is a bit smooshed. It takes Verlaine five tries to park the Lada,” or “Why did she name her horse [Rambo] after that sweaty, bullety Sylvester Stallone?”

“Bullety”; no one has ever used that adjective before, that apt neologism. And” flappy wind,” a virtually perfect-but-unused adjective for wind, so revealing of her character.  It is no wonder Michael Winter, a CanLit icon known for his attention to detail,  endorsed this novel with a plea, “Please —I beg you dear reader — read Jessica Grant. “

Nutshell summary: Audrey Flowers’ father is knocked into a coma just before Christmas (by a Christmas tree hanging out the back of someone’s truck) and she has to return to Newfoundland, leaving her pet tortoise behind with her friend, Chuck, a dejected player of small-not-big roles in Shakespeare plays. (The tortoise narrates every so many chapters, relaying his chaotic history of ownership and the demise of Audrey’s relationship with her deserting, rock-climbing ex.) Back at home, Audrey, obsessed with the game of Clue, and possibly suffering from a low IQ, ends up slowly piecing together a family mystery and the truth behind her ever-lasting pet mouse, all the while recapping her entire childhood with her unconventional, endearing family. The ending is one of those endings where it is past midnight, and you just want to sleep, but you can’t lay the book down.

As mentioned in her acknowledgements, it is a very “punny” novel.  There is a great sense of humour in the narration, in terms of obsessive references to the game of Clue, two  consistent catch phrases, an offbeat plot and its off-kilter delivery, and a plethora of puns . Random examples:  The narrator purposefully left the L out of her father’s obit, so it read Water Flowers, not Walter Flowers. Her father used to refer to the family unit as “The Bouquet,” (because their last name was Flowers). In the opening chapter, in one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever read, Audrey, in an act of delusional heroics,  gets herself into a predicament in which an air marshal is asking for his gun back through the bathroom door (and his last name just so happens to be Marshall). Even before that, we get the lines, “Winnifred is old, she might be three hundred. She came with the apartment. The previous tenant, a rock climber named Cliff …” (A rock climber named Cliff. And Cliff, by the way, referred to the ceiling as an overhang, because the walls and ceilings of his apartment were equipped with climbing holds, for when he wasn’t busy rappelling from the fire escape). Grant’s outwardly off-kilter novel works because it is balanced with a sadness not milked into melodrama like most writers would do. The offbeat nature of the book, and constant puns and wittiness aren’t exhausted or cheesy; instead they perfectly fuel what makes this novel an utterly unique gem. It helps that she portrays the whacky Flowers family in a believable and endearing manner. (They build a plane in the basement to help Audrey get over her fear of flying, her live-in uncle Thoby has one arm longer than the other, for some reason, so he is obviously the one to change light bulbs or scrape ice from windshields.)

Also, it is okay that eight or nine of these chapters are narrated by Audrey’s pet tortoise, because Winnifred is one of the best characters of the year, and hilarious, and might do for the tortoise pet trade what Sideways did for wine? A quote to summarize all my raving, “Audrey’s brilliant. She’s hilarious. I could read about her all day. Same goes for the tortoise.” – The Globe & Mail. (Come, Thou Tortoise was a Globe and Mail top book of the year.)

For the first time, ever, a Canadian author’s novel has been published in Russia before any other country, including his own. Harvey’s latest, Reinventing the Rose, just released by Russia’s Centrepolygraph, is currently being shopped around Canada and the US by Harvey’s newly acquired North American agent, the renowned Peter Mason.  Reinventing the Rose only comes with a nutshell summary for now (but Salty Ink will be sure to get more details closer to its publication date) . It is the story of a pregnant artist and her gynecologist boyfriend, who takes her to court with the intention of forcing her to have an abortion. The story proper, the battle between the man and woman, is interlaced with a detailed development of the embryo.

Reinventing the Rose is Harvey’s fifth book to be translated into Russian and published there. Others include his CanLit masterpiece, Inside, the internationally acclaimed powerhouse, The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, an early collection of short fiction, Directions for an Opened Body, and Stalkers.

When the Quill & Quire asked why he’s had such success in Russia, Harvey honestly answered, ““It’s all voodoo to me, you never know what’s going to happen.” There is undeniably a fair bit of voodoo and chance in this industry, but what’s even more concrete and certain: Very few modern Canadian writers are as prolific, talented, diverse in content, or internationally well-received as Kenneth J. Harvey.  Another key to success in Harvey’s career: clever marketing and innovation. He created (far as I know) the idea of a “transcomposite narrative” when he wrote Skin Hound and Blackstrap Hawco, Inside spawned a new and apt genre called GritLit, and each of his last three novels came out with marketing bangs like “Written in only six months,” (Inside) “A book fifteen years in the making” (Blackstrap Hawco), and “The first book published in Russia before its home country” (Reinventing the Rose). All remarkable feats AND useful marketing angles.

It should be no surprise that Harvey would be the first Canadian author published in Russia before anywhere else. Harvey has had tremendous success with his books outside of Canada. The Town That Forgot How to Breath, for instance, has been published in over a dozen countries since its 2003 release, and Inside won Italy’s prestigious Libro Del Mare Award. He was the first Canadian author to do so.

Salty Ink: You’ve had tremendous success with foreign sales of your work. The strength of your novels is obviously the key, but, can you pinpoint the most crucial step or two you’ve taken that have played the biggest role in your foreign success?

Kenneth J. Harvey: The biggest step was taking the initiative to contact foreign agents on my own and attempt to have them take me on.

Salty Ink: What are three most memorable moments, in terms or foreign success, in your writing career?

Kenneth J. Harvey:

1.) Winning Italy’s Libro del Mare and travelling to Italy to collect it at an extravagant ceremony atop a casino with half-naked dancing Vegas girls and Chinese contortionists. The media travelled from all over Italy to do interviews, and there were even TV cameras. I felt like a criminal mastermind and/or a nutcase celebrity.

2.) Receiving my biggest advance ever from my UK publisher.

3.) Reading at the Edinburgh Writers Festival in Scotland.

A Random Sampling of The Many Faces of The Town That Forgot How to Breath

Canada                                                 China                      Dutch                        France                            Germany

Italy                                                       Russia                      Sweeden                    UK                               US

Scrabble Lessons is deeply affecting and gorgeously written. As a writer, reading her is like holding on to fire works. It’s a thrill to be so fondly jealous you never wrote these stories yourself. No detail is left blandly described, and it is all so fresh and vivid. Example: “The tears started, big fat drops cutting inside her cheekbones and taking the easier nose-side route,” and you know what she means! You know she sat back in her chair and saw all her scenes and never missed a thing in describing them; it’s like she’s writing from the inside out. Where most writers might say Gary was confused, or Gary was disoriented, she’d say “Gary felt like he’d stepped inside some weird foreign film, like he should be looking around for subtitles to make sense of it all.” Even each gesture is given a unique visual. For example: “She shook her head like there were flies buzzing around it” or “She held her fingers ruler straight.”

Take the opening story, “Scrabble Lessons.” The detail is there, she talks about the clinking sound of the tiles as she hears her mother and grandmother playing scrabble in another room, and describes everything in a way you see; she really puts you there with lines like: “Rob was two-handing his beer glass like it might get away from him.” And there is some sort of harsh, intentionally paradoxical contrast in many of the lines in this story: a lot of the most vivid violent sentences are played off so casually. Example: “Just about the time the steering wheel was punching through Dad’s chest, Mom was joining VELO to CITY, her V boldly claming the red square of a triple word score.” You get a juxtaposition of the violent, unfathomable death of her father laid over the mundane, everyday routines of her life, except this day, her father dies in a car accident and with these sentences stacked the way they are, you really get a sense of the narrator’s shock via Vryenhoek’s command of language and lingual wizardry. When her mother shares her scrabble wisdom, or lessons, is it not a metaphor for life, done in a subtle way for the deeper reader? A clever parallel between the game of scrabble and the game of life; the approaches to each.

I could make some half-apt and flattering comparisons, so that anyone reading this might get a feel for this book. I could say, “Scrabble Lessons is Lisa Moore’s short fiction meets Kathleen Winter’s,” but there’s something here that’s all Leslie Vryenhoek’s, and that’s what excited me the most. A new voice, and I love it. This is a perfect collection of short stories: punchy, top-notch creative writing that makes you feel something. Jammed in around all these skilfully constructed sentences is raw emotion you feel, seeping out through the words. These are stories you feel as a reader and admire as writer.

Read More About the competition by clicking here  You can even elect yourself, or get someone to elect themself, as a panelist and pick a book to defend.

CLICK ANY OF THESE BOOK COVERS TO READ MORE ABOUT THAT TITLE 

The National Post’s book blog, The Afterword, released their picks for “Best Book of the Year” today, and I was not surprised to see these two titles on there. I’ve seen about twenty-five “best books of the year” lists in the last month, and can’t think of many these two haven’t been on. Sincere and well-deserved congrats to both Michael and Carla. Great writers, great people. I’d speak more on the books, but what’s left to say, besides trust the National Post, The Quill & Quire, The Globe & Mail, (Salty Ink) and all the other people/places out there insisting you read these books.

Being selected as a Heather’s Pick wasn’t enough, Indigo made it quite clear this week just how much they back this book when they included it on their list of the top 11 fiction titles of the last decade! Chapters’ CEO Heather Reisman has called it ” … a read to savour. Beautifully written, unique in voice, and passionate.”

The Birth House has been dubbed as “The Canadian novel that knocked The Da Vinci Code out of the #1 spot on the Globe and Mail bestseller list!” It remains a national bestseller, and has been sold into several other countries. 

You can read more about Indigo’s best book lists at The National Post’s blog, The Afterword.

Authors of the absolute gem Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books have released another two lists: their top ten books of 2009.

Trevor J. Adams’ Top Ten 2009 Titles

Stephen Patrick Clare’s Top Ten 2009 Titles

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
The Peep Diaries by Hal Niedzviecki
Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin
The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre
The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown
The Ice Passage by Brian Payton
The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
In Another Life by Raymond Fraser
Away From Everywhere by Chad Pelley
Scrabble Lessons by Leslie Vryenhoek

 

Titles in red are Atlantic Canadian titles.

 

 

 

I first heard about Michelle Butler Hallet when she won the David Adams Richards Prize in 2004, for Obliged to Drink Bad Water, and since that time, Michelle has released three well-received books, been anthologized in publications such as The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and most recently in Hard ol Spot, won the 2006 Arts & Letters award for her dramatic script, Aphasia, as well as having written several other short scripts workshopped at various festivals. And, so we’re clear she wears every hat a writer can, she has poetry out there  as well, including a publication in Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Thinking. Moreover, she has worked in books-related roles and is or has been associated with various prestigious and important literary journals, such as Riddle Fence and The Antigonish Review.

What fuels all this work? I’ve gathered that tea seems to play a big role, and an awe of Flannery O’Connor perhaps. (I’m only speculating. Also: I am jealous of her prolific output.)

The one thing you’ll hear said, consistently, about Michelle Butler Hallett’s work is that it is hard to categorize. It’s unique; rare in its style, delivery, and effect on a reader. I’ve felt mentally exercised by her work, and I give that out as the ultimate compliment, and, what better a compliment than to have everyone agreeing her work defies categorization? The Globe and Mail has even said, “Butler Hallett seems often to be creating from a subliminal place, riding on intuition, unencumbered by the counsel of editors.” Books in Canada were apt offering up two words to describe her writing, “Economy and power.”

 The Shadow of Grace (2006), her debut and collection of short fiction,  was graced with the following, spot-on front-cover endorsement by CanLit icon Michael Crummey, “A rare debut, a collection that takes more risks than some writers take in a lifetime. And Michelle Butler Hallett has the talent to match that courage. She has command of an astonishing range of voices, places and era and never shies from confronting the thorniest, most troubling questions about what it means to be human. More please, ASAP.”

Read more »

The Coast’s  (Halifax) Best Local Book Votes Chose:

1.) Halifax Haunts, by Steve Vernon
2.) Black Snow, by Jon Tattrie
3.) What They Wanted, By Donna Morrisey

The Scope’s (St.John’s) Best new Book Votes Chose:

1.) Galore, by Michael Crummey
2.) February, by Lisa Moore
3.) Away from Everywhere, by Chad Pelley

I’m not sure what the question is here: Who thinks to combine hockey and poetry, or how remarkable it is that the daring combination has proven so successful? But those questions shouldn’t take up too much press and overwhelm the fact Maggs, like any poet, chose a subject for his poems and wrote well enough to win over multiple audiences and numerous critics. He believed in the idea and it worked, remarkably well. As far as reception goes for a collection of poetry, I have heard as much or more about Night Work in the last two years than I have any other collection of poetry. And I love the idea of The National Post and London Free Press praising the same book as The Edmonton Oilers’ blog just quoted from. Has that happened before? Or who has been interviewed by Prime Time Sports and CBC’s Weekend Arts Magazine and The Next Chapter?

Selected Recognition for Night Work: The Sawchuck Poems 

- Recently shortlisted for the 25,000$ Kobzar Literary Award, winner to be announced March 4, 2010.

- Winner of the 2009 Winterset Award

- Winner of the 2009 E.J. Pratt prize for Poetry

- A Globe and Mail  “Top 100 books of 2008.”

- Has read at over 10 esteemed festivals, such as Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival, WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival, Stephen Leacock Festival, and, Writers at Woody Point.

Select Review Snippets

“Randall Maggs gets closer than any biographer to the heart of the darkest, most troubled figure in the history of our national game. This may be the truest hockey book ever written.” -Stephen Brunt, Globe and Mail and SportsNet

“Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems seems poised to become a Canadian classic.”
- Dave Bidini, The Globe and Mail

“I love this book for the reasons I love the game; for its guts, its skill, and its heart. ”
- Karen Solie, Award-winning Canadian poet

“Gary Bettman need look no further if the NHL is in the market for its own poet laureate .”
- Barbara Carey, Toronto Star

“An unlikely a pairing as you will ever see, Newfoundland scribe Randall Maggs skillfully marries hockey and poetry into one of this year’s literary masterpieces.”
- Stephen Clare, The Chronicle Herald

Here is a Bookshorts short film, Night Work: A Sawchuk Poem, directed by Justin Simms.

 

All fall long, any mention of books included Michael Crummey’s Galore. The most recent praise? Just shortly after being shortlisted for the GG award for fiction, it was picked as an Amazon.com book of the year in both the editor’s picks category and the reader’s choice category.

Moreover, this week, The National Post’s Mark Medley declared it “One of the best books of the decade!”

I read in an interview with Crummey on Galore, just after it came out. He said something along the lines of “This will either be my best received book or the opposite.” Here’s Steven Galloway’s response to that, as written in the Globe and Mail, “His two previous novels, River Thieves and The Wreckage, were critical successes and national bestsellers, and deservedly so. They were very good books and I enjoyed them immensely. Galore blows them out of the water.”

I’m glad it went the way it did for him. Galore is unquestionably one of the best received Canadian novels of the year.

Alistair MacLeod’s Island: The Collected Stories (Selected by The National Post’s Brad Frenette)

Select praise for Island

“Stunning.… The quality of the writing matches the very best in the world … The stories are about us and here is that rare voice, a unique voice, to illuminate our experience.”
–Edmonton Journal

“The book is a treasure.… These are stories well worth returning to, with layers to uncover gradually.… It doesn’t get any better than this.”
–Toronto Star

“Every story is touched with the beauty and truth of genius”
–Irish Times

Kenneth J. Harvey’s The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (Selected by The National Post’s Brad Frenette)

Select Praise for The Town That Forgot How to Breathe

*** Kenneth was the first Canadian to ever win Italy’s Libro Del Mare Award, and did so with this novel.

“Haunting, poetic, funny, moving, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe takes on the big themes–the meaning of life, our relationship to the dead, man’’s place in the rapidly changing modern world–and carries everything off with a surging confidence.”
-John Harding, Daily Mail (U.K.)

“Kenneth J. Harvey, a writer like no other, is as knowledgeable as he is adventurous. A very exceptional novel, extraordinary in its power.”
- Alistair MacLeod, IMPAC award-winning author of No Great Mishief and Island

David Adams Richards’ River of the Brokenhearted (Selected by The National Post’s Brad Frenette)

Select Praise for River of the Brokenhearted

“Richards is as Shakespearian in his tragicomic humour as in his elemental themes of good and evil, hatred and love . . . . a magnificent tale of forgiveness . . . ablaze with . . . gnarled, powerful and unblinking prose that follows his characters down to their innermost circles of personal hell — and the deep, unfashionable, moral vision that underlies the writing.”
—Maclean’s

“River of the Brokenhearted is a wonderful, sad novel that reflects our capacity for strength, loyalty and forgiveness. With its strong sense of justice, this book is also a testament to the power of faith — in all its many forms.”
—Edmonton Journal

Lisa Moore’s Alligator (selected by Edmonton Journal’s Richard Helm)

Select praise for Alligator

Winner of the 2006 ReLit award, and shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Thomas H. Radall Award.

“Compelling and rewarding … surprisingly emotional, rich with human feeling and insight. Moore has a keen ear for both dialogue and a well-turned phrase.”
- The Quill & Quire

“Lisa Moore is an Astonishing writer. She brings her to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what’s important in life.”
- Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day

Wayne Johnston’s The Navigator of New York (selected by Edmonton Journal’s Richard Helm)

Select Praise for The Navigator of New York

The Navigator of New York was shortlisted for the 2002 Giller Prize and GG Award, among other accolades.

“Read this book simply for the force, beauty and accuracy of its images…. Wayne Johnston is the most prodigiously talented and morally complex novelist this country has produced since Mordecai Richler…. I’ll follow his writing anywhere.”
—The Globe and Mail

Beautiful [and] evocative…. Johnston is an accomplished storyteller, with a gift for both description and character, which he uses masterfully here.”
—Booklist

2009’s Best Received, Most Critically Acclaimed Atlantic Canadian Novels

Click Here to Read More About Febraury

Click Here to Read More About The Bishop’s Man

Click Here to Read More About Galore

Among 2009’s Most Unique Atlantic Canadian Gems 

Click Here to Read More About Amphibian

Click Here to Read More About Lovesongs of Emmanuel Taggart

Click Here to Read More About Come, Thou Tortoise

Among 2009’s Best Books of Poetry

Click Here to Read More About Gun Dogs

Click Here to Read More About Never More There

Click Here to Read More About Where Genesis Begins

Among 2009’s Best Short Fiction

Click Here to Read More About Scrabble Lessons

Click Here to Read More about What We’re Made of

Click Here to read more About Hard ol Spot

Suggested 2009 Debut Novels 

Click Here to Read More About Going Fast

Click Here to Read More About Away from Everywhere

Click Here to Read More About The Factory Voice

Atlantic Canadian Gems They May Have Missed the First Time

Click Here to Read More About The Corrigan Women

Click Here to Read More About Still Life with June

Click Here to Read More About Skin Room

Highly Succesful and Influencial Atlantic Novels They May Have Missed

Click Here to Read More About This All Happened

Click Here to Read More About Inside

Click Here to Read More About The Colony of Unrequitted Dreams

The Ultimate Atlantic Canadian Gripping Read & The Ultimate Gift for Book Lovers

Click Here to Read More About Mercy Among the Children

Click Here to Read More about Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books

Since the discovery of its mising last page, over twenty years after it was published, and the subsequent relaunching of Alden Nowlan’s first novel, The Wanton Troopers, the book has been getting considerable attention, and it seemed like the right time to mention that the highly acclaimed musician, NQ Arbuckle, adapted one of Nowlan’s poems, “Ypres 1915″ into a song. (The Ottawa Citizen on NQ Arbuckle: ” NQ Arbuckle takes the squalor of life and composes magical poetry.” Here’s what he did with that Nowlan poem:

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Atlantic Canada’s Kenneth J. Harvey has a new novel coming up, and has signed with renowned New York agent, Peter Matson, at Sterling Lord Literistic. Matson has represented such suucesful books as Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Starting with Harvey’s new novel, Reinventing the Rose, Matson will represent Harvey personally in Canada, the US and the UK.

Reinventing the Rose “concerns an artist who becomes pregnant, and her gynecologist boyfriend who takes her to court with the intention of forcing her to have an abortion. Throughout the text, the detailed development of the embryo runs side by side with the story of the battle between man and woman.” It has already been bought by the Harvey-loving Russian publisher, Centrepolygraph.

ABT On Ryan Turner: “A regular contributor to many of the country’s creative-fiction journals, Turner has been called ‘the next big thing’ for so long now he just shrugs it off.”

ABT On Tanya Davis: “Tanya Davis is a whirling dervish of creativity … [the] poet, spoken word performer and musician has made a name for herself as one of the region’s most vibrant and vital new voices.”

You can listen to her fabulous music here: http://tanyadavis.ca/music.html

ABT On Chad Pelley: “You know you re on the right career path when you have the likes of Kenneth J. Harvey calling you ‘one of the most talented young writers to come out of Newfoundland in many years.’ Away from Everywhere has been receiving rave reviews from both readers and critics.”

ABT On Jon Tattrie: “Jon Tattrie might be the busiest writer in Atlantic Canada, [yet] somehow … the thirty-something scribe managed to publish his first book, Black Snow, this past spring. The novella received critical and popular acclaim for its emotional intensity and strong narrative arc.”

ABT On Jesse Ferguson: “… he serves as poetry editor for The Fiddlehead, has published reviews in several Canadian journals, has contributed poetry to such prominent publications as The New Quarterly and Harper’s … [and] his first full-length book of poems, Harmonincs, has just hit bookstore shelves.”