Fall 401 Tour

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We’re on the road again this week! Our Fall 401 Tour kicks off tonight at Drawn & Quarterly with readings by CP Boyko, Catherine Leroux, KD Miller, Alex Pheby, and special guests Randy Boyagoda and Lazer Lederhendler.

There will surely be magic in the night when Thursday’s event brings Boyko, Leroux, Miller, and Pheby to Toronto’s Monarch Tavern, where they’ll be joined by Daniel Wells himself.

But heaven’s waiting down the tracks, where Windsor and Biblioasis Bookshop will welcome our four intrepid travellers and their brilliant new books home at the end of the ride.

Although we’ve (mercifully) come to the end of this blog post, it’s alright, baby, it’s alright.

 

 

 

Paige Cooper’s Debut Gets Longlisted

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We’re over the moon for our author Paige Cooper, whose collection of short fiction Zolitude has been longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Beloved by dogs everywhere, Zolitude is a stunning literary debut by a true Canadian original. But don’t take our word for it . . .

Praise for Zolitude

“I’m not sure I can praise this book highly enough . . .  Zolitude surprises first because of a unique use of and care with language, which is both kinetic, bold, unexpected, and yet also controlled and coldly precise when it needs to be. The approach re the environment and the modern condition is deeply *right*, too. Cooper’s Zolitude manages an interiority of character that’s honest and, again, pretty unique. These are flawed, interesting characters presented in sharp relief . . . and now words are kind of flailing me. Just buy this damn thing, okay? You’ll see what I mean. I’m just a huge fan of this writer now. I can’t imagine her doing anything other than going from strength to strength. This prose is just amazing.” —Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy

“[A] spikily surreal debut collection . . . vivid, complex . . . brilliant.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Each of Zolitude‘s fourteen stories explores intimacy as a basic need and the ways love can be articulated, perceived, and frustrated. The result is a collection that is often astonishing and occasionally crests the extraordinary.” —The Walrus

“Cooper finds moments of beauty (or maybe it is just truth) in such landscapes. The surreal, sometimes fantastical worlds of these stories are so wholly realized, stepping into them is a pleasing form of disorientation.”—The Globe and Mail

“Rarely have love stories seemed less cliché and predictable . . . tenderness and violence and doom are so densely layered as to deliver the affective impact of a novel . . . these stories are so well made, so viscerally moving, I often found the need to take a break between them to recover. “—Quill & Quire (starred review)

“Zolitude is Cooper’s first short story collection, but it reads like the work of a far more seasoned writer. Her stories are painful and wise, ugly and moving, and at their best, reveal uncomfortable truths about human connection and its limits . . . With each opening paragraph, she pitches us into a new atmosphere, full of gorgeous detail and emotional rawness, a world that feels too real to be a fantasy, or perhaps just fantastic enough to be real.” —Montreal Review of Books

“Standing apart from the pack of debut collections is never an easy thing, but Paige Cooper’s Zolitude demands attention . . . every sentence is razor-sharp, and you have no idea where the story is going until the moment it gets there.” —Montreal Gazette

“[A]cross fourteen stories Cooper builds strange, genre-defying, sci-fi- and fantasy-infused realities that are distinctly her own. Truly, they’re like nothing else you’ve read lately.”  —Toronto Star

“The badass ensemble of Zolitude‘s women characters don’t so much take the reader for a ride as they snatch the reader up and jerk them along an austere, dystopian road of twelve short stories. Written with unapologetic intelligence and complexity, this incredible collection refuses to ever give up—and you don’t want it to.” —All Lit Up Summer Book Club

“Refreshingly smart and offbeat storytelling befitting our curious times . . . Cooper’s rich language, clever narrative structures, and uncommon storylines make Zolitude a fine addition to the speculative genre.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Zolitude is one of those books that you won’t want to stop talking to people about, and I haven’t. Ask anyone I know. A collection of love stories – flawed, sad, and intensely engaging – Paige Cooper’s debut is devoid of cliché and predictability. I never knew where I would end up in any of the stories. It’s magical. It’s twisted. It’s unbelievable. Go read it!” —All Lit Up

“A timely exploration of love and humanity…urgent and energetic.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“Cooper proves that she can do just about anything. She’s as comfortable telling a story from the perspective of a hip young record-label employee . . . whose hand is blown off by a mail bomb (‘Ryan & Irene, Irene & Ryan’) as she is telling the story of a mounted police officer who lives on the edge of loss and violence (‘The Emperor’) . . . Readers willing to give themselves over to some mystery will be rewarded.” —Kirkus

“A keen eye for the quirks of human behavior.” —Publishers Weekly

“When I read a Cooper story, “Vazova on Love” for example, I feel I have been transported into a strange country, a puzzling one, sensuous and potentially hostile, and I know she will reveal something to me if I stay very focused.” —André Forget

“Paige Cooper’s finely-crafted debut collection . . . crackles and spits with intelligence. Cooper has honed a style that lends itself to unusual, crystalline landscapes . . . Even worlds that are familiar are made strange in [her] lucid imagination.” —The Arkansas International

“As strange and wonderful as the characters in these pages are, they are grounded in real emotion and experience, longing and loneliness.” —Open Book

“Paige Cooper’s stories screw down into the earth, holding fire in their gaps. Her characters turn zero sum games into bloodsport. Zolitude will not leave you alone.” —Sasha Frere-Jones

“The stories in Zolitude are dense, rich, and wildly intelligent . . . wrapped in perfectly wrought and unusual images.” —Geography of Reading

“Zolitude is the literary equivalent of a non-stop action film. These stories are tough and visceral and fraught. Cooper’s characters – sometimes reckless, sometimes tender, always fierce – are breathtakingly fresh and wonderfully complicated. When you finish this book – about how the world marks us and how we mark ourselves – the word ‘culpability’ will have new meanings. These are worlds that are keenly observed and then forged into the kind of wild and uncompromising stories the times demand.” —Aislinn Hunter, author of Stay and The World Before Us 

“Cooper’s stories feature far-flung worlds, magnified consciousness. This is mesmerizing work.”—Tamara Faith Berger, author of Maidenhead

IN THE MEDIA: Spring & Summer Highlights

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The majority of the Bibliofolk are wearing plaid today, so it’s either definitely autumn or we’re starting a ‘90s tribute band featuring one bagpiper and my lapsed grade seven trombone skills. Either way, let’s carry on with last week’s round-up of spring/summer media highlights.

The two most recent titles from the Biblioasis International Translation Series both found eager audiences. A Vanity Fair Hot Type book for April, Ondjaki’s Transparent City garnered, among other reviews, a rave from the Times Literary Supplement. Reviewer Alev Adil writes: “Vibrant…Ondjaki is experimentally bold, and his prose shifts through a kaledioscope of registers, from the poetic to the political, the erotic to the absurd . . . Stephen Henighan‘s thoughtful translation has an energetic lyricism and is alive to the echoes and vestiges of the African languages that imbue Ondjaki’s text . . . The novel begins and ends with a raging inferno, and yet it is as full of hope, appetite and libidinal energy as it is of grief and mourning.” We’re looking forward to October and Ondjaki’s appearance at the Vancouver Writers Festival—not to mention his upcoming appearance on CBC’s Writers and Company.

Inspired by the life of legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, it’s probably no surprise that Oscar by Mauricio Segura has gotten so much air time. Featured as Jael Richardson’s book pick on CBC’s q, Oscar was the subject of Segura’s CBC The Next Chapter riff. Segura also appeared on CBC Montreal’s All in a Weekend and Our Montreal, and wrote this excellent playlist for Largehearted Boy.

Speaking of musical books: Years, Months, and Days, Amanda Jernigan’s transfiguration of Mennonite hymns into lyric poems. A quiet book, it’s been quietly gathering its readership and inspiring elegant reviews, including this one for Image Journal: “The poems are tiny, seeds only, bare of flourish, each containing the germ of an idea so large the mind can hardly hold it… if you seek to tune those numbered days of yours to what is most frightfully vital, you might carry this book in your satchel awhile. It’s tiny enough to conceal in a large pocket, but it thunders, and its seeds carry fields.” You can listen to Amanda read from her exquisite collection in this post at All Lit Up.

After praise-filled reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, Alex Pheby’s Playthings generated the season’s most emphatic publicity-department high five when it earned a rave review in the New York Times. Reviewer Catherine Lacey writes: “”[A] skillfully rich novel . . . A close third-person voice situates “Playthings” in an eerie place between a lived account of insanity and a careful observation of a mind’s unraveling . . . [A]gile and wily.” Reader, my palm is still stinging. It was a good high-five.

Labour Daze

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It’s been a busy summer here at the Bibliomanse—not least of all because we’re still settling in to our new digs. It turns out it’s a lot of work to build and stock a warehouse with fifteen years’ worth of books.

 

But now that the Humidex remains at 40 in Windsor summer’s over, let’s take a spin through some media highlights from our spring and summer titles.

1979, Ray Robertson’s novel about coming of age in small-town Ontario, was the talk of multiple towns. Ray was interviewed in Metro and Chatham Daily News, as well as CBC London’s Afternoon Drive. In Winnipeg Free Press, Kathryne Cardwell praised the Robertson’s skilfully constructed characters: “As Robertson traces Tom’s coming of age, he explores themes of innocence lost, wisdom gained and learning to forgive … [Robertson’s] talent as a writer shows in his clear prose and ability to create unique and believable characters.”

The Pre-War House, the debut collection of short fiction by Alison Moore, Booker-shortlisted author of The Lighthouse, garnered rave reviews from seemingly everyone who picked it up, including Kirkus (“A masterful collection”), Booklist (“Moore is the real deal”), Minneapolis Star Tribune (“I envy Moore’s talent”), Winnipeg Free Press (“Delightfully creepy and gut-wrenching”), and Arkansas International (“Moore’s writing is surprising and exact”).

After being featured on CBC’s “21 Works of Canadian Nonfiction to Watch For in the First Half of 2018,” Rachel Lebowitz’s The Year of No Summer, lovingly described around the office as “Maggie Nelson does the Apocalypse,” was praised by Kirkus, Toronto Star, and Midwest Book Review, among other venues. Neil Surkan’s lyrical and deeply thoughtful engagement with the text for Literary Review of Canada is one we’re still talking about: “In the footsteps of Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne Carson . . . these essays cling to you long after you’ve read them, like lingering grains of wet, black sand.”

Zolitude, Paige Cooper’s debut collection of short fiction, was included in multiple CBC lists and received reviews . . . basically everywhere, from  Quill and Quire , The Walrus and Montreal Review of Books, to Toronto Star and Globe and Mail, to Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal—but I would be remiss not to mention that we also may have loudly exclaimed about a series of tweets by none other than Jeff VanderMeer, who wrote: “I’m not sure I can praise this book highly enough. It’s sui generis, managing to be both intellectually rigorous and also emotionally resonant. Cooper’s Zolitude manages an interiority of character that’s honest and, again, pretty unique. These are flawed, interesting characters presented in sharp relief . . . Just buy this damn thing, okay?”

Fall books awaiting fame & fortune.

We’ll be back next week with recaps of more spring/summer titles!