International in scope, The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is one of the most well-regarded fiction prizes in the world. They are awarded each year by the Commonwealth Foundation, and start with regional shortlists, and then regional winners for best book and best first book, followed by the unveiling of the “overall” best book and best first book for all world regions. In addition to £10,000, the recognition, and countless booksales, the overall winner of the Best Book Prize is invited to London to schmooze with Queen Elizabeth II . The award’s mandate is to “encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.” The ”overall” winner will be announced on April 12th.

Carol Bruneau, an anthologized writer of short fiction and multi-award-winning novelist, really got started in 1995 with the publication of her short fiction collection After the Angel Mill, which was nominated for the Dartmouth book award, and heralded by The StarPhoenix as “One of [Cormorant's] gems this year … a collection of linked short stories that is as hard to get out of your head as a haunting blues song.” She followed up in 1998 with another collection of linked stories, Depth Rapture, blending realism and black humour, which the Globe and Mail remarked had “the maturity and richness of a first-class storyteller.” Like After the Angel Mill, Depth Rapture was nominated for the Dartmouth Fiction award.

And then came her true break out, her debut novel, Purple for Sky, which not only won her the Dartmouth Fiction award she had been twice nominated for, but also the prestigious Thomas Head Raddall award — the award given to “the best novel of the year by an Atlantic Canadian author.” Purple for Sky was also a Globe and Mail top book of the year, and nominated for the Pearson Reader’s Choice Award. Very few books, particularly a debut novel,  garner that kind of reception. It was picked up in the US as well, by Carroll & Graf. The National Post called it “this year’s surprise,” stating that “Bruneau has a saucy, punchy, even ebullient writing style.”

From here she released Berth in 2005, a ReLit award nominee heralded by CanLit icon Lynn Coady as “a subtle work of offhand wisdom and insight, heartbreakingly true-to-life,” and her most recent novel: Glass Voices. Glass Voices — an emotionally rich look at both perseverance in the face of tragedy and the complexities of human relationships – was named a Globe and Mail and Sunday Herald book of the year in 2007, and nominated for multiple awards, such as the Relit and Dartmouth Fiction award. It was also picked by author/critic Stephen Patrick Clare as a top ten book of 2007.

CLICK A BOOK COVER BELOW TO READ MORE ABOUT THAT TITLE.

 Click the “Read More” tab to the right to read the rest of this article: A great interview with Carol –>

Salty Ink Q & A with Carol Bruneau

Salty Ink: Off the top of your head, without struggling for “favourites,” name one or two books you really liked by a fellow Atlantic Canadian author.

An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark, and The Nymph and The Lamp by Thomas Raddall. I loved both for their lovely intertwining of characters and settings.

Salty Ink: How did you end up writing books?

I wanted to write books from the time I was seven, then spent nearly 30 years working up to it—studying English, studying journalism, working in the news business then FINALLY starting to write fiction. I began when my youngest son was two. Having three kids made me realize time was short. It was the kick in the arse I needed. Ever since, I’ve found that living a writing life, like writing itself, is a daily process, a daily choice, an ongoing commitment.

Salty Ink:  What is your favourite part of the writing process? Your least favourite?

Two parts of the process make me happiest: the early “radar phase” when you just start doodling to hear the characters’ voices and start feeling like a magnet for ideas; and the final revisions phase when you uncover the last tiny secret that makes everything gel.

My least favourite part is starting the draft when I’ve got a ton of notes and bits and pieces, but am not sure how to build the story. Being a circular thinker, I find figuring out structure to be most challenging. It’s gotta be easier for writers who process things in a more linear way—but maybe not, who knows? 

Salty Ink: What is great about being a writer? What isn’t so great?

Being “allowed” to live by the imagination is a gift that not everyone has or is able to “indulge.” I say “allowed” and “indulge,” the downside being that artistic creativity is undervalued by a world that measures success by the cash generated. Obviously for most writers this doesn’t compute.

Salty Ink: What’s your main goal when you sit to write?

To get something down, to do it with some kind of grace, and have fun.

Salty Ink: What book of yours came the easiest/hardest, and any guesses as to why?

Berth was the easiest, because its story is linear and happens over one year instead of many, and because it deals with characters living in extreme isolation, its imaginary world was easier to create. Glass Voices was hard, but not as hard as the novel I’ve recently finished writing, based loosely on the life of sculptor Camille Claudel. Working on it has continually pushed me out of my various comfort zones.

Salty Ink: What has been the most memorable moment of your writing career to date?

Touring an asylum for the insane in Southern France.

Salty Ink: I love the sell line on the back of Glass Voices, as it is a truly rich well from which to draw out a great and honest story: “Seventy-one-year-old Lucy Caines’ husband suffers a severe stroke that makes Lucy reexamine her complicated relationship with the man she has variously loved and loathed.” Particularly for people who might not have read this yet, could you elaborate for us?

Lucy’s husband Harry is a dickweed, basically. But because of the times and the tragic circumstances of her life—they’re the only members of both their families to survive the Halifax Explosion—she has few options but to stay married to him and put up with his drinking, gambling and womanizing. But persevering teaches her a lot that she needs to learn about herself and about forgiveness and the value of not quitting.

Salty Ink: Purple for Sky has been a particularly successful novel — a Globe and Mail book of the year and a winner of the Thomas Head Raddall award and the Dartmouth Fiction Award, for starters. The title is interesting, care to elaborate on it, particularly for anyone who hasn’t read it yet?

It comes from the central motif in one of the characters’ narratives, a crazy quilt which becomes a figurative landscape: green for trees, blue for lakes, purple for …etc. In the U.S. edition the title was changed to A Purple Thread for Sky, which is pretty clunky. But the publisher thought “Purple for Sky” was too obscure—i.e. Canadians would get it, but not Americans. Go figger.

Salty Ink: You teach writing yourself at NSCAD, do you find working in writing either enhances or interferes with your own writing?

 I love being surrounded by visual arts students—their creative energy is always inspiring. And the analytical writing I teach there doesn’t cross circuits too much with my fiction-writing in the way that teaching creative writing does. Also, my students—many of whom aren’t readers—keep me grounded in the reality that art is a lot bigger than literature alone. As a writer I find it humbling, shocking, but almost refreshing to be around students who have never heard of Margaret Atwood.

This Year’s Shortlist (click the book’s title to read more on that book):  Ray Guy’s Ray Guy: The Smallwood Years, Randall Maggs’s Nightwork: The Sawchuk Poems, George A. Rose’s Cod: The Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, and Agnes Walsh’s Going Around with Bachelors.

The award will be presented at the Water Street Book Club on Thursday, April 1, 7:00 p.m., at The Heritage Shop on Water st. 

The Water Street Book Club event on April 1st will feature By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole. Nice event double up, hey?

“Gorgeously made, this hushed, intelligent movie has no sentimentality and marks the arrival of a major filmmaking talent [Sherry White].” - John Doyle, The Globe and Mail

“Meghan Greeley prooves She’s one of Canada’s hottest new actresses.” – Elle Magazine.

“Mary Walsh gives her finest ever dramatic performance here.” The Globe & Mail
“Mary Walsh gives a deeply beautiful performance.” – The National Post.

Visit this site (http://crackie.ca/)  for more details about what I consider one of the finest Canadian films I’ve seen, and maybe the best one out of Atlantic Canada (I’m open to more great Atlantic Canadian film suggestions, email chad@saltyink.com)

Click here to read all about it on their new website: http://themarchhare.ca/about

This year’s roster, spread out over 9 venues in several towns, includes: Pat Byrne, Andreae Callanan, Jan Conn, Antony Christie, Michael Crummey, Tom Dawe.Anthony De Sa, Stan Dragland, Dermot Healy, Joel Thomas Hynes, Tara Manuel, Alayna Munce, Larry Small, Sara Tilley, and Des Walsh.

*** For A Chance To Win A Copy of Migration Songs: Email your Mailing Address to chad@saltyink.com
or Leave Your Mailing Address as a Comment Below! ***

Free Book Contest Closes March 15th.

Big congrats to Invisible Publishing, top-notch designer by Megan Fildes, and Sydney Smith (artwork)

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As much as I love good book design, we all know you can’t really judge a book by its cover. I thought it was a clever competition title and a fun way to showcase some books, but I’m glad, after a thousand votes, that Migration Songs won this competition, because as the cover suggests: this book is something different, and something good. It’s clear in the opening lines that Anna is an impressive writer, and her debut shows great promise. There is wit, humour, sadness, sincerity, compassion, and humanity in these pages. Most impressively, there is a true originality in her descriptions, they are fresh, informative, and distinctive; there is nothing dull about how she portrays things, and she provides handfuls of laugh-out-loud passages.

And watch this title reveal I believe the designer might have borrowed from:

“For so long, it was my parents’ story that gripped me, overshadowing my own. My life has always been merely a tendril off the vine of theirs, creeping toward the sunshine. It never bothered me to be a sideshow, an afterthought. But something calls to me from the future — a bird sound, like that of geese in flight, faint but insistent — a song of remembering, pushing out feathers I never knew were mine.”

We meet the story’s main character, Joan, as a 29 year old schoolbus-driving cough drop junky who’s cherry-flavoured Halls sooth her more than her shrink can. She’s moved back in with her parents. She’s anxious, lost, and looking for where she belongs.

“I was so nervous the first day when the kids piled in that I downed 3 Halls in 15 minutes, sucking at them until my cheeks ached, and my tongue went numb.” Feeling that the children were “too perishable to be transported in a rickety old bus with maroon vinyl seats by someone of my undependability.”

At its core you might call it a book about identity, a needing to know where you come from, a meditation on belonging. In fact, a good portion of the novel is a literal explanation of how Joan came to be: a 65-page-long retelling of her parents history and courtship “that was, of course, in the first days of their courtship before their hearts became deaf to one another. Before they were like two fish swimming in tanks side by side — they could see one another but, for all intents and purposes inhabited separate oceans.” While the 65-page dip into her parents’ story was arguably the strongest plotline in the novel, the writing really shines when Quon gets to Joan’s story, where she’ll just drop the occasional paragraph-long passage so remarkable that you stop and read it twice to marvel at the writing itself. She cuts characters out well too. “My father is Englishman with the black hair and blue eyes of an Irishman … he’s been in Canada since I was born but he still refuses to sing ‘Oh Canada’ or pledge allegiance to the queen — he’s anti-monarchy.” And “the fact that he even has a study in this day and age is a clue to what kind of man he is. Private. Retiring. Well-read. On special occasions, he smokes a cigar in there and the smooth scent of it creeps out from under the study floor. The aroma of my father’s absence.”

Again, tying into the design of the book, there are some well-worded bird analogies or metaphors woven throughout the whole novel, which allude to their sense of community or rituals that Joan doesn’t have. How she chooses to see and depict birds, at any given moment in the novel – trapped within a tree or flying free – seems to be a reflection of how she feels in that moment. Joan spends a great deal of time in some sort of fond jealousy of birds, in between the cough drop popping.

For a chance to win this story sad-funny story of a cough drop addict looking for her flock: email your mailing address to chad@saltyink.com or leave it as a comment below.

Last night, at the Palais Royale Ballroom in Toronto, Randall Maggs was presented with the $25,000 Kobzar Literary Award for Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. Night Work has to be one of the most crtically acclaimed and awarded books of Canadian poetry in the last fews years, and is a book about Sawchuck, the charismatic  man, as much as it is a book of “hockey poems.”

Other accolades for Maggs’s Night Work:

- Winner of the 2009 Winterset Award

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

- A Globe and Mail  “Top book of 2008.”

- Randall 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.

- “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

Click Here to Read More About This Novel At Her Publisher’s Website.

Click Here to Read Salty Ink’s Featured Book of the Month Article on Come, Thou Tortoise

Joseph Boyden, Priscila Uppal, and Hal Wake are this year’s judges, and the winner, announced in April, will be presented with $7,500, and the other finalists get a $750 gift certificate for Amazon.ca. The Quill & Quire’s Stuart Woods selected the six finalists.

Full Shortlist:
No Place Strange by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden (Key Porter Books)
Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (Knopf Canada)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Random House Canada)
Goya’s Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
 Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic (Random House Canada)
Daniel O’Thunder by Ian Weir (Douglas & McIntyre)

Watch the YouTube video below to hear Jessica discussing her truly unique gem of a novel.

Where: St. John’s, NL.
The Heritage Shop on 309 Water Street (Beside The Murray Premises).

When: Thursday Night, March 4th, 7-9.

Open to the public, on a first come first seated basis.

Directly from their Executive Director:

“This will be the beginning of a regular series of literary discussions, on the first Thursday of each month. Historic Sites Association are calling the events the Water Street Book Club, and we will announce the lineup of authors and book titles on Thursday evening. The format will be very informal. We’ll introduce Lisa, and she will discuss the process of writing her most recent book, February, followed by a reading, and then there will be a question period. Tea and coffee available. All finished by 9:00 p.m.”

You can buy copies on site, and have them signed. There are few writers as captivating in person and riveting on the page as Lisa, and Salty Ink highly recomends you attend thursday night.

This Year’s Shortlist: Michael Crummey’s Galore, Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise, and Lisa Moore’s February

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Michael Crummey’s Galore

From the publisher’s website: An intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries, Galore is a portrait of the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland, a place almost too harrowing and extravagant to be real. Propelled by the disputes and alliances, grievances and trade-offs that bind the Sellers and Devine families through generations, Galore is alive with singular characters, and an uncommon insight into the complexities of human nature.

- Shortlisted for the 2009 GG Award.

-  Currently on the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award shortlist.

- Currently on the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award shortlist.

- Currently on the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlist (Canada and Caribbean Region)

- Easily the most critically well-received novel out of Atlantic Canada this year, or, in years?

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise

From the publisher’s website: A delightfully offbeat story that features an opinionated tortoise and an IQ-challenged narrator who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery. Audrey (a.k.a. Oddly) Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends. Poor Winnifred.

- A Globe & Mail Book of the Year

- Currently in The National Post’s Canada Also Reads Competition.

- “One of those rare books that manage to entwine humour – in this case, even outright silliness – with poignant insight and a captivating plot.” – Quill & Quire.

And, most importantly: Salty Ink’s Featured Book of the Month for March, click here for that article.

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Lisa Moore’s February

From the publisher’s website: In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine’s Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O’Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns. It begins in the present-day, but spirals back again and again to the “February” that persists in Helen’s mind and heart.

- Currently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region)

- Named as one of Quill & Quire’s “Fifteen Books That Mattered” in 2009.

- A Globe and Mail Top Book of 2009.

- And most importantly, was Salty Ink’s featured book in February, click here to read that article

* The winner will be announced at Government House Thursday, March 25.

The awards involving fiction and poetry are listed below.

Click a title to read more about that book.

Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award 

This prestigious award is for “the best work of adult fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian Writer,” and is awarded by Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Michael Cummey’s Galore, Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man, and Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky.

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award 

This award is “the best first book of fiction or non-fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian author.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Binnie Brennan’s Harbour View, Greg Malone’s You Better Watch Out, and Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky.

Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing 

Brand new this year, this award ”recognizes an author (or authors) who excels at illuminating the Atlantic region’s vibrant history and acknowledges the work of the publisher who makes the book available.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Raoul R. Anderson and John K. Crellin’s Mi’sel Joe: An Aboriginal Chief’s Journey, Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk’s SS Atlantic: The White Star Line’s First Disaster at Sea, and Mike Heffernan’s Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster.

  Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)

 Awarded to ”the best books published the previous year in celebration of Nova Scotia and its people.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: George Elliott Clarke’s I & I, Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man, and Anna Quon’s Migration Songs.

Atlantic Poetry Prize

Awarded to ”the best work of poetry published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian poet.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Anne Compton’s Asking Questions Indoors and Out, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen’s Lean-To, and Zachariah Wells’ Track & Trace.

Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award 

“A Call For Nominations is sent out to members of the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Association, asking for their top three books. The three most-nominated titles make up the shortlist, which is then sent out to the booksellers to vote on.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Michael Crummey’s Galore, Linden MacIntyre’s, The Bishop’s Man, and David Adams Richards’ God Is.

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award

“The Best Atlantic-Published Book recognizes publishing companies and their hardworking professionals who bring out new books each season. Each year, a publisher whose book possesses the best balance of content, presentation, quality of design and production, as well as contributing the most to an understanding of Atlantic Canada, receives the award.”
 

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Ian Warkentin and Sandy Newton’s Birds of Newfoundland Field Guide, Trudy Morgan-Cole’s By the Rivers of Brooklyn, and David A. Francis and Robert M. Leavitt’s A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary. 

Come, Thou Tortoise (2009)

Jessica Grant

Knopf Canada

- Available in softcover March 9th!

- A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2009!

- Shortlisted from the 2009 Winterset Award and Amazon.ca’s First Novel Award!

- Currently in The National Post’s Canada Also Reads Competition!

 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. This is a book you will never forget. It helps that she portrays the wacky Flowers family in a believable and endearing manner. (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.

Check out her renowned collection of short fiction as well: Making Light of Tragedy

- The Winner to be announced on March 5th, Along With a A Chance to Win a Free Copy of the Winning Novel.

- Click Here to Read All About the Competition and See the Longlist.

Migration Songs by Anon Quon (Invisible Publishing, design by Megan Fildes & art by Sydney Smith)

From the Back Cover: Joan is on the brink. Cough drop addict, school bus driver, mixed race daughter of a Maoist English father and a Chinese-Canadian mother, Joan struggles for meaning after a friend’s death reveals a secret life. Migration Songs is a lost letter from your past, an intimate experience full of humour and grace.

“A strong debut from a new hopeful voice.”
Sue Carter Flinn, The Coast

“An engaging tale, peppered with memorable scenes and lovingly drawn characters.”
- Sarah Steinberg, Quill & Quire

The Factory Voice by Jeanette Lynes (Coteau Books, design by Duncan Campbell)

From the Back Cover: The lives and dreams of four vital, engaging, women revolve around mysterious events at a Fort William military aircraft factory in 1941.  Loyalty and betrayal, love and worthiness, friendship and ambition are the themes which connect the characters in this lively, quirky, fast-paced novel.

- A 2009 Globe and Mail “Book of the Year”

- Longlisted for the 2009 Giller Prize.

Hit and Mrs. by Leslie Crewe (Nimbus Publishing, design by Heather Bryan)

From the Back Cover: Linda, Bette, Gemma, and Augusta are four lifelong friends who live in Montreal. This year they’re all going to turn fifty, so they decide to take a trip to New York together (courtesy of Linda’s philandering husband’s Visa Platinum). But at the LaGuardia airport washroom, Bette accidentally switches bags with a young mother who’s actually smuggling diamonds for the mob, and things start going terribly wrong. When they kill an aggressive cab driver with pepper spray, the four friends know this is not going to be the trip of shopping and Broadway shows they’d expected.

“If you’re in the mood for a cute chick-lit mystery with some nice gals in Montreal, Hit & Mrs. is just the ticket.”
- Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

In 2009, both Trudy Morgan-Cole and Tina Chaulk published novels, and both have been very well-received. Trudy’s By the Rivers of Brooklyn is one of the most talked-about novels of 2009 here in Newfoundland, and twice in the last month I’ve walked past strangers (at bus stops and coffee shops) looking more than enthralled in Tina’s funny-sad romp of a novel, A Few Kinds of Wrong. (and I could certainly relate: the more poignant passages in Tina’s novel really are enthralling and very well written.)

Below is a description of each novel, as well as what a fellow Writers’ Guild member and The Telegram critic Joan Sullivan had to say about each of these novels:

On Morgan-Cole’s By the Rivers off Brooklyn

“One of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read. [It] establishes her as a writer to be reckoned with. I literally could not put it down.”
- Helen Porter, award-winning author of january, february, june or July

In the 1920s, Jim, Bert and Rose Evans all move from Newfoundland to Brooklyn, New York, in search of work and a better life, leaving their sister Annie back home in St. John’s. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind, transforming into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York.

“This novel is both meaty and delicate; you can dig right into it, and still find yourself savouring turns of plot, turns of phrase … The writing is deft and enjoyable.”
- Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

On Chaulk’s A Few Kinds of Wrong

“A book that engages the reader in a subject rarely treated in modern fiction — the shattering, unreasoned grief of a daughter when her beloved father dies. Tina Chaulk has a talent for getting inside the always quirky and often perverse sensibility of her protagonist, a young woman coming to terms with flawed memories, misunderstood relationships and a reinterpretation of family history.”
-Bernice Morgan, award-winning author of Cloud of Bone and Random Passage.

Mechanic Jennifer Collins is a woman in a man’s world, but since her father’s sudden death her world has been falling apart. Now she’s in a losing battle, risking everything to cling to the past while everyone else moves forward. In A Few Kinds of Wrong, Tina Chaulk takes us into the garage and tells the poignant story of Jennifer, her pain, her loves, and her coming to terms with reality.

“It is good solid story with unexpected yet authentic twists, and people you are interested in. A book like this is why people read.”
-Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

  More Selected Accolades for Harvey’s  Blackstrap Hawco

- Declared the #1 best Book Out of Canada in 2008 by Amazon.com!

- A Globe and Mail 2008 Book of the Year

- On the Quill & Quire’s 15 Books that Mattered in 2008 list

- Currently on The International Impac Dublin Literary Award Longlist (shortlist announced in April 2010) 

- Shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region)

- A 2008 Giller Prize nominee

- “An Instant Classic.” – Ottawa XPress

More Selected Accolades for Moore’s  Open

- Won The Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award for Short Stories.

- Shortlisted for the 2002 Giller Prize.

- Shortlisted for the 2003 Winterset Award.

- Ranked #18 in Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books.

- “She has mastered the short story.” – Quill & Quire starred review

- Dazzling … Daring … [Moore] has a genius for nailing the physical world on the page.” – Globe and Mail

- “Open is like this from start to finish: perceptive and wonderful.” The National Post

(Also available as an audio book through Rattling Books, click here)

* Harvey introduced the transcomposite narrative in novel Skin Hound: There Are No Words (2000, The Mercury Press). It transcomposes passages of non-fiction with fiction. It combines true-to-life passages that describe actual people with passages featuring fictional characters. It lifts newspaper reports of news events and transplants them, word-for-word, into descriptions of fictional events. It takes the exact wording of journal entries or letters written by real people and attributes them to the hands of supposedly fictional characters. It takes poetry, for example, and uses lines from poems written by the masters and places new lines within the poems that are written by fictional characters…. The transcomposite narrative tries to mirror what we actually see in our memories, because what we see in our minds is always a mixture of fact and fiction or history and myth. It is never entirely one or the other.

Stephen Patrick Clare, critic, freelance writer, and co-author of the absolute gem Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Book, is also the host of  a very popular radioshow, The Book Club, which is now on air across the country.

Salty Ink: Stephen, congrats on all the success with your radioshow, I know I’ve been hooked since I heard of it in November. Tell us all about your show and when we can tune in. 

 Stephen Patrick Clare: “The Book Club” has been on the air since September of 2008. It is heard each Tuesday from 1.30pm – 2.30pm (AST) on CKDU (88.1fm in Halifax, ckdu.ca around the world) and is now available on radio stations across canada via the NCRA network. Along with book-related news, bestseller and event listings, the program features interviews with local, regional, national and international writers and industry insiders. Our very first guest was naomi klein, and since then we’ve spoken with the likes of kenneth harvey, donna morrissey, david adams richards, leonard cohen, joseph boyden, eleanor wachtel, ian brown, linden macintyre, elizabeth hay, jian ghomeshi, graeme gibson, david suzuki, ray fraser, lisa moore, michael crummey, chad pelley, ian colford, amy mckay, lesley choyce, lesley crewe, jean beliveau, neil peart, carla gunn, diana gabaldon, louise penney and many, many more. Upcoming guests include terry o’reilly, joy fielding, robin sharma and henry rollins. The show’s mandate has remained the same since day one; to bring readers and writers together.

“Author’s Hour” in St. John’s with Mike Minor  

  Hosted by MUN’s English grad student, Mike Minor, The Author’s Hour typically features a Newfoundland author every Tuesday, including a two brief readings, a casual conversation with the author, musical selections by the author and host, and a midway interlude to feature a ”Dead Poet of the Week.”

Tune in to 93.5 FM in St. John’s, or online at http://www.mun.ca/chmr/main.html, Tuesdays from 2-3 NL time.

Click below to listen to a clip from a show Mike just sent me, of him and Chad Pelley talking about Away from Everywhere, why Canadian Books are so often depressing, the increasing needs of author self-promotion, and why The Weakerthans made his book’s soundtrack.

http://chadpelley.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/afe-clip-from-authors-hour-interview.mp3

Leslie Vryenhoek

Judges Eric White and Nora Kelly praised “Letitia’s Cold Footsteps,” for its “nuanced exploration of alienation … [it] takes us into the strangeness of arrival in a new country and makes us shiver … a distinctly Canadian poem.”

Even better news: her prize-winning poem, “Letitia’s Cold Footsteps,” is from a poetry manuscript, dealing with “home and belonging,” that she has recently handed over to her publisher. She’s talented, distinctive, and prolific. What more do you want from a writer. Go buy Scrabble Lessons, go!

Atlantic Canadian launch of Best Canadian Poetry 2009
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Location: East Gallery, Memorial Hall, UNB Fredericton
Free! And copies will be available for sale

Get out and celebrate the Atlantic Canadian launch of the anthology this Thursday night, for this very credible book edited by Griffin Poetry Prize-winner A.F. Moritz. Many Atlantic Canadian poets included in the anthology wil be reading their work, including:  Jesse Ferguson, Anne Compton, Shirley Bear, Richard Lemm, M. Travis Lane and Peter Norman.

Lisa Moore & Michael Crummey Make the Six-book Shortlist for “Caribbean and Canada Best Book”

Lisa Moore’s February

- Named as one of Quill & Quire’s “Fifteen Books That Mattered” in 2009.

- A Globe and Mail Top Book of 2009.

- Published, or to be published, in over five countries.

- Click Here to Read Salty Ink’s Feature Article on February

  Michael Crummey’s Galore

- Shortlisted for the 2009 GG Award

  - A National Post/ The Afterword Book of the Year.

- A Globe and Mail Book of the Year.

- Easily one of the best recieved, most talked-about Canadian novels of 2009.

Shandi Mitchell & Carla Gunn Make the Six-book Shortlist for “Caribbean and Canada Best First Book”

 Shandi Mitchel’s Under This Unbroken Sky

- One of Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for 2009 .

- A Selection for the Barnes & Noble First Look Book Club.

- Published, or to be published, in over five countries.

- “A powerhouse of a debut that grips from start to finish.” —Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

Carla Gunn’s Amphibian

- A National Post / The Afterword Best Book of 2009.

-  One of Globe and Mail’s Top Five Debut Novels of the Year.

- A Quill & Quire Most original Voices of 2009.

- Released to countless rave reviews and critical praise. Literally.

The Opening Lines:
The woman on the telephone is on the cusp, somewhere between a nanny-ish desire for precision and ethnic cleansing.
“You’re not from here, are you?”

Selected Praise and Accolades:

-Shortlisted for the 2007 John and Margaret Savage 1st Novel Award.

“Armstrong’s prose style is what really stands out. He’s able to nail down a description with language that is at once poetic and quite funny.
- Mark Callanan, The Independent

“Hilarious and deeply human. Most people will enjoy this for its lighthearted and humorous surface value, and deeper readers will marvel in the greater subsurface connotations.”
- Chad Pelley, Current Magazine

From the Backcover

On a snowy winter night, Gerry Adamson hides from his family in a laid-up sailboat. Pushing sixty, holed-up with a laptop, he’s trying to make a novel out of thirty-odd years of compromises and betrayals that have seen him go from youthful erratic passion to late-middle-aged dithering. He’s making one last effort to make it mean something.

Short Fiction
Roger Moore’s “The Key” (Island View, NB)
Mark Jarman’s “The Troubled English Bride” (Fredericton, NB)

Creative Non-fiction
 Jeff Rose-Martland’s “First Call Resolution” (St. John’s, NL)

No Atlantic Canadians on the poetry shortlist, but we’re just taking a break. Halifax’s Sue Goyette won it last year,

Winners will be announced March 22, 2010.

Well … let me re-word that, because I hate seeing a great competition devolve into a popularity contest. If you like Story’s story, vote for it. And it really is worth voting for. It only takes a second to register to be able to vote, so don’t cop out over that. Get behind her! This is a very unique and exciting competition. Follow it.

Talented Newfoundland author Kate Story has made it into Broken Pencil Magazine’s annual “Indie Writers Death Match.” Every year the magazine selects eight short stories, of the hundreds or thousands submitted, and then pit them against each other by letting people vote. There is also much smack talk and voter involvement in the process.

Click here to read Kate Story’s story, “Skirt Event.” / Vote for it

Click Here to Read All about Kate Story. Not only a writer, but a rockstar and actor as well.

* Voting for this round ends Sunday at Midnight! So Giddy-up, hey?

The Atlantic Canadian novels on here

–> Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise is, as Salty Ink has already said (read full review here) a fresh, innovative, unprecedented, unforgettable gem. A book you never forget. But don’t take my word for it, Take Michael Winter’s: “Please —I beg you dear reader — read Jessica Grant. ”

–> Mark Anthony Jarman is consistently lauded as one of Canada’s finest boundary-expanding and engaging writers of short fiction. The Quill & Quire has referred to his “delirious and courageous use of language,” and his writing is often noted for its rich metaphoric nuances and substance. My White Planet has been particularly heralded for the stunning range of its stories, from the story of a mind-reading flight attendant, to the story of a father accused of cowardice and neglect after his dogs maul his son.

–> Steve Zipp’s Yellowknife was an award-winner before it was even published (the H.R. Bill Percy prize). Consistently praised for its wit and cleverness and the underlying portraiture of Yellowknife. “Consider me Gobsmacked,” Shelf Monkey critic Corey Redekop said, “What a terrific novel.” Prairie Fire: “A clever, distinctly postmodern novel that pelts along at quite a pace.” 

If you’ve already read any of these novels, take a minute and feel good about yourself. If you haven’t, ask yourself why not, really. Yes, everyone’s talking about this book or that book, and you have an ever-growing to-read list like the rest of us … but that’s why The Afterword conceived this contest. To get everyone talking about these books. I loved Come, Thou Tortoise, I have a copy of Yellowknife in queue to read, and to really show I’m not a hypocrite, I am literally on my way out the door to pick up a copy of My White Planet.

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.