THE AFFIRMATIONS, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE: Interviews & Reviews

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IN THE NEWS!

THE AFFIRMATIONS

Luke Hathaway, author of The Affirmations (April 5, 2022), was interviewed by K.R. Byggdin for the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia author spotlight. The interview was published online on July 11, 2022. You can read the full interview here.

An excerpt from the interview:

“LH: The weaving of art forms for me has very much to do with friendship, love, collaboration, community …: marrying words to music (as, in earlier books, marrying words to images), I enter into conversation with friends and fellow makers—an extraordinarily subtle and intimate kind of conversation, in which form and content take equal part, in which meaning can be manifest in ways that are not only verbal but also melodic, rhythmic, gestural, visual, sculptural….”

Grab your copy of The Affirmations here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) was reviewed by Ian Thomson in The Spectator. The review was published online on July 9, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Thomson writes:

“Full of humour, and gossipy in a good way, A Factotum is also tinged with an autumnal sense of loss and the self-examination of a man looking back on half a century in the trade. From start to finish the book is a delight.”

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

Spotlight On: ALL THE VOICES CRY by ALICE PETERSEN

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Summer is here and so is another title in our Biblioasis Spotlight Series! Biblioasis is proud to be the first home to several outstanding authors, so for the month of July, we wanted to celebrate the beauty of the debut with Alice Petersen‘s short story collection, All the Voices Cry (May 15, 2012). Don’t miss a brief note from the author below!

ALL THE VOICES CRY

Winner of the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize (2012)

An academic’s wife, struggling to keep up with her husband’s quest to find a long-dead author’s Tahitian love-garden, realizes that her own idea of paradise no longer includes her husband. An architect dreams of slender redheads, Champlain’s astrolabe, and a brush with mortality—and finds at least the latter at Danseuses 7 Jours. An elderly man boards a trans-Pacific flight in an attempt to elude the prediction of a psychic, only to understand too late how the prophecy has shaped his actions.

In All the Voices Cry, modern life collides with all the old pushes and pulls: city and country, the global and the local, the ideal and the real. Petersen’s characters chase the mirage of escape, and are brought up hard by reality. This is a book rooted in landscape, tangled in the brambles of personal history, and it introduces in Alice Petersen a wondrous new voice that is yours to discover.

“Finely crafted and pared down to their bare essentials … These are stories that work on multiple levels, and continue to divulge their secrets after several rereadings.”—Quill & Quire

“Alice Petersen’s All the Voices Cry is masterful and potent—incredibly satisfying for a reader.”
—Kathleen Winter, author of Annabel

New Zealander-Canadian Alice Petersen was the 2009 winner of the David Adams Richards Award, offered by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. Her stories have variously been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Writers’ Union of Canada competition, the CBC Literary awards, and the Metcalf Rooke Award. All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis, 2012) won the University of Concordia QWF First Book Prize. A second collection of stories, Worldly Goods, was published by Biblioasis in 2016. Petersen lives in Quebec with her husband and two daughters.

A NOTE FROM ALICE PETERSEN

The stories in All the Voices Cry were written between 2002 and 2010. During that time, we built and spent most weekends in a small log cabin on the shores of a lake just outside the Parc de la Mauricie in Quebec. I would walk the trails in the Parc, learning about the woods of Eastern Canada. Edible mushrooms, lichen cups, purple lightening weed with matching flower spiders, mosses and bog plants, the changing states of water and ice—all of these things were there to be read and understood as intrinsic parts of Quebec. As a new immigrant I hoped that the process of memorizing this landscape and noting down the details would make that place more familiar, so it all got mulched up and made into stories.

But writing the stories in All the Voices Cry did not make that place mon coin. Although we had that cabin for over a decade, I was still just visiting, even at the end. Perhaps I will always feel this way about living in Canada. I do not know. Other stories in the book span the globe, ending up back on the East Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where I grew up. Having dual nationality is a kind of emotional waterskiing—I feel lucky to have a foot in two countries, although there also is a precarious, teetering quality to the whole arrangement. The stories are lightly interlinked.

I have always liked the book cover that Gordon Robertson designed for Biblioasis. The image shows young man launching himself off the dock into a chilly looking lake. There is snow on the dock. Looking at the picture, you want to say don’t jump! It’s so cold! But that’s life. We each have to jump, don’t we? We have to, because the lake is there and because swimming is necessary.

Get your copy of All the Voices Cry here!

Check out Alice’s other collection, Worldy Goods, here!

QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL, DANTE’S INDIANA, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE, THE AFFIRMATIONS, THE MUSIC GAME: Interviews and Reviews!

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IN THE NEWS

QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL

Querelle of Roberval (August 2, 2022) by Kevin Lambert, trans. by Donald Winkler has been reviewed in Montreal Review of Books! The review was posted online today, July 4, 2022, and will be in their Summer 2022 print edition.

Reviewer Alexandra Trnka writes,

“A vibrant storm of gossip and myth … The language of the novel is rich and evocative, a compliment to both Lambert’s and Winkler’s instincts for poetry. Lambert displays his linguistic skill equally in images of the erotic and the abject, in a prose that entices and disturbs at the same time.

“[Lambert] dares us not to flinch … a gory, sensual, and provocative exploration of sex and violence, and their potential to redeem lives that have been deemed, for one reason or another, not worth living.”

You can read the full review here.

Order your copy of Querelle of Roberval here!

DANTE’S INDIANA

Randy Boyagoda, author of Dante’s Indiana (September 2021), was featured on an episode of CBC Ideas. The episode was posted online and aired on June 29, 2022 at 8PM ET.

Randy Boyagoda says to producer Greg Kelly,

“And so if I think about Indiana, I think about the middle of the middle of the middle of America. And then I think about Terre Haute being high ground. Well, in so many different ways that just becomes, for me, an American figuration of Purgatory, where others would see Inferno. That’s again, the hopefulness.”

You can listen to the full episode here.

Grab your copy of Dante’s Indiana here!

Or, start the series with Original Prin here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

Marius Kociejowski discusses his latest book, A Factotum in the Book Trade (April 26, 2022), on The Biblio File podcast, hosted by Nigel Beale. The episode was published online on July 4, 2022.

In the interview, Kociejowski says,

“When I was first in England, you could go into just about any small town and head straight for the bookshop. By and large, they are all gone. With those bookshops have gone the possibility of conversation. […] I had this rather brash young Italian marine biologist come in [to the bookshop] and we started talking about why it is that bookshops are closing. He rather blatantly accused me, or rather my generation, of having failed to pass that knowledge on. And I think that may be, to an extent, true.”

You can listen to the full episode here.

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

THE AFFIRMATIONS

The Affirmations by Luke Hathaway (April 5, 2022) was reviewed by rob mclennan on his blog. The review was published online on July 3, 2022.

mclennan writes,

“Hathaway seems to explore the boundaries of poetic form as it relates to an operatic storytelling, pushing at the edges of older forms with a new hand, and a new eye, and seeing what just might be possible.”

You can read the full review here.

Pick up your copy of The Affirmations here!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game by Stefanie Clermont, translated by JC Sutcliffe (February 8, 2022), has been listed by CBC Books on their summer reading list! The list was posted online on June 23, 2022. You can see the full list here.

Grab a copy of The Music Game here!

 

ESTATES LARGE AND SMALL, TRY NOT TO BE STRANGE, QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL: Features and Reviews!

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IN THE NEWS

ESTATES LARGE AND SMALL

Estates Large and Small (August 16, 2022) by Ray Robertson was reviewed in Shelf Awareness! The review was posted online on June 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Harvey Freedenberg writes,

“A warmhearted and unconventional love story that’s also an opportunity for a gentle encounter with some of life’s fundamental questions … With Phil’s droll humor and world-weary cynicism, and Caroline’s clear-eyed determination to live her final days on her own terms, the two make for an appealing couple. Like the philosophers they encounter, Estates Large and Small only hints at answers to life’s deepest mysteries, but it’s a wise reminder that the journey is really the point.”

Order your copy of Estates Large and Small here!

TRY NOT TO BE STRANGE

Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda (September 13, 2022) by Michael Hingston has been featured in the summer edition of the Literary Review of Canada! Editor-in-Chief Kyle Wyatt frames his editorial note “Without Great Seriousness” around Hingston’s latest book. The edition was published online on June 27, 2022.

Wyatt writes,

“It was with admittedly escapist relief that I greeted the arrival at my desk of Michael Hingston’s forthcoming Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda.

A writer from Edmonton, Hingston has been nursing an obsession with the tiny Caribbean island of Redonda, christened by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and located midway between Nevis and Montserrat. More specifically, he has found himself transfixed by the uninhabited micro-nation’s absolute monarchy.”

You can read the full note here.

Get your copy of Try Not to Be Strange here!

QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL

Querelle of Roberval (August 2, 2022) by Kevin Lambert, trans. by Donald Winkler has been reviewed in Fugues! The review was posted online on June 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Benoit Migneault writes,

“The translation by Donald Winkler, who was also responsible for the previous novel, is of the highest quality and once again stands out for its richness and respect of local color … Provocative and deliciously irreverent, the novel can be savored with an almost satisfying pleasure, commensurate with the disproportion of the conflicts and questionings that agitate it.”

Pick up your copy of Querelle of Roberval here!

POGUEMAHONE, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE, SHIMMER, ON DECLINE, CHEMICAL VALLEY: Interviews, Reviews, and Awards!

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IN THE NEWS

POGUEMAHONE

Patrick McCabe was interviewed by Neil Wilson for The Ottawa Writers Festival podcast. In the interview, he reads from and discusses Poguemahone (May 3, 2022). The interview was published online on June 8, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

In the interview, McCabe says,

“It is not about the Winter of Discontent […] or English politics or Irish troubles […] but it is really about the secret, mysterious currents that govern everything, that we don’t understand.”

Patrick McCabe was also interviewed by Sam Jordison and Lori Feathers on the Across the Pond podcast. In the interview, he reads from and discusses Poguemahone (May 3, 2022). The episode was published online on June 14, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

In the interview, McCabe says,

“Often, when you tear things up, some tiny flicker happens. It could be out of a hundred pages, you get a collocation of words or a combination of sentences and something triggers in you: “Ah, that is what the book is about.” And you don’t quite know, but you start writing again. […] The first draft is trying to find out: what is the stone in your shoe?”

Pick up your copy of Poguemahone here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been featured in the “Summer Reads 2022: Books About Books” list in Fine Books & Collections Magazine. The list was published online June 8, 2022, and printed in the June edition. You read the full list here.

Rebecca Rego Barry writes,

“Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade (Biblioasis, $18.95) is the wistful memoir of a Cecil Court bookseller who both charms readers with anecdotes about Patti Smith and Martin Stone and also wallops them with statements such as ‘the antiquarian book trade is slowly but surely destroying the antiquarian book trade.’ A Canadian who emigrated to London, Kociejowski plumbs his experiences in the English book trade during the eighties and nineties—the major players and massive changes—and reflects on what is slipping away. He writes, ‘I want dirt; I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery. I want to be able to step into a place and have the sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life.’ Agree.”

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski has been reviewed by David Moscrop in the Globe and Mail. The review was published online on June 10, 2022. You read the full review here.

Moscrop writes,

“Reading Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade is like walking through an endangered species of bookstore … [It] is cranky, obscure, charming, … and illuminating. It reads like a used bookstore smells. … Go open this book and see where it takes you.”

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski has also been reviewed by Laurence Worms, of Ash Rare Books, on his blog: The Bookhunter on Safari. The review was published online on June 10, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Worms writes,

“It is enviably and beautifully written, full of memorable flashes of description, bringing characters to life in a phrase … It is unquestionably the best-written account of the modern rare book trade you could hope to find.”

Pick up your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

SHIMMER

Alex Pugsley, author of Shimmer (May 17, 2022), was interviewed by Junction Reads for their series, ‘The First Thirty’. The interview was posted online on June 9, 2022. You can watch the full conversation here.

Yesterday on June 14, the launch of Shimmer was held in Toronto at the Ballroom in Gladstone House! There were readings, music, and conversation, and we partnered with Flying Books for book sales.

Pick up your copy of Shimmer here!

ON DECLINE

On Decline cover

Andrew Potter, author of On Decline (October 2021) was interviewed for CBC Ideas with Nahlah Ayed. The episode was published online on June 7, 2022, and was aired on CBC radio the next evening at 8PM ET. You can listen to the full interview here.

Potter tells Ayed,

“I think climate change is an effect of our civilization, but it becomes a problem when you lose the ability to do anything about it.

The argument in the book is that the real nature of our decline is not an event, it’s a process. That is: what have we lost? We’ve lost the ability to fix the problems we face. And I think climate change is the biggest one.”

Grab your copy of On Decline here!

HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Alexandra Oliver, author of Hail, the Invisible Watchman (April 5, 2022), was interviewed by Tabassum Siddiqui for CBC Books! The interview was published online on June 7, 2022.

An excerpt from the interview:

“Sometimes a line comes to you, so you take that line and then you model the poem around that. Sometimes it’s like a block of marble and you go in and chip into it, and you shape it into something completely different. But I think it allows for musicality and pleasure and some kind of intrigue—in the best case, the reader can feel a vibration.”

You can read the full interview here.

Get your copy of Hail the Invisible Watchman here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

On Thursday, June 9, 2022, it was announced by the Atlantic Book Awards that Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021) won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction! You can watch the full ceremony here, with the Alistair MacLeod Prize presented at 1:03:00.

Here’s what the jury had to say:

“In this courageous collection, David Huebert holds little back as he weaves superbly crafted stories of the dark, difficult, and gritty reality of being human. Whether it be the destructive impact we have on our environment, each other, or ourselves, Huebert tackles this challenge with intelligence and compassion, both in his language and style, and in the empathy with which he portrays the human experience. The intertwining of ugliness, beauty, metallic cold and human warmth, and destruction and hope, creates a visceral, hopeful, and rewarding experience for the reader.”

David Huebert, author of Chemical Valley, was interviewed in an author spotlight on the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia website for the Atlantic Book Awards! The spotlight was posted on June 8, 2022.

Huebert told interviewer K.R. Byggdin,

“Oil is the imagistic backdrop of Chemical Valley, but it’s also a book, first and foremost, about struggling people—guilty people, people in crises, hilarious people, people at turning points, sick people, people seeking help. It’s not all doom and gloom, either: there’s joy and love and humour here. I’d like to think everyone can find parts of themself in one or two of these characters.”

You can read the full interview here.

Pick up your copy of Chemical Valley here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY wins the ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS’ ALISTAIR MACLEOD PRIZE!

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Chemical Valley coverBiblioasis is thrilled to share that last night, on Thursday, June 9 at 6:30PM EST, it was announced by the Atlantic Book Awards that Chemical Valley by David Huebert won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction!

The prize for the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction is $1000, and celebrates excellent short story collections by writers who are either from the Atlantic Provinces, or live there now.

Here’s what the jury had to say about Chemical Valley:

In this courageous collection, David Huebert holds little back as he weaves superbly crafted stories of the dark, difficult, and gritty reality of being human. Whether it be the destructive impact we have on our environment, each other, or ourselves, Huebert tackles this challenge with intelligence and compassion, both in his language and style, and in the empathy with which he portrays the human experience. The intertwining of ugliness, beauty, metallic cold and human warmth, and destruction and hope, creates a visceral, hopeful, and rewarding experience for the reader.

The other finalists for the Alistair MacLeod Prize were: The Running Trees by Amber McMillan (Goose Lane Editions) and The Love Olympics by Claire Wilkshire (Breakwater Books).

Chemical Valley was also named a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. A huge congratulations from all of us to David!

ABOUT CHEMICAL VALLEY

A Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Finalist • An Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction Finalist • A 2022 ReLit Award Finalist • A Siskiyou Prize Semi-Finalist • A Miramichi Reader Best Fiction Title of 2021

Out there by the dock the ocean and the air are just layers of shadow and darkness. But the creature’s flesh hums through the dark—a seep of violet in the weeping night.

From refinery operators to long term care nurses, dishwashers to preppers to hockey enforcers, Chemical Valley’s compassionate and carefully wrought stories cultivate rich emotional worlds in and through the dankness of our bio-chemical animacy. Full-hearted, laced throughout with bruised optimism and sincere appreciation of the profound beauty of our wilted, wheezing world, Chemical Valley doesn’t shy away from urgent modern questions—the distribution of toxicity, environmental racism, the place of technoculture in this ecological spasm—but grounds these anxieties in the vivid and often humorous intricacies of its characters’ lives. Swamp-wrought and heartfelt, these stories run wild with vital energy, tilt and teeter into crazed and delirious loves.

David Huebert – cr. Nicola Davison

ABOUT DAVID HUEBERT

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. David’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The Walrus, Maisonneuve, enRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries, and anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. David teaches literature and creative writing at The University of New Brunswick.

Pick up your copy of Chemical Valley from Biblioasis here!

SHIMMER, THE DAY-BREAKERS, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE: Media Hits!

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IN THE NEWS

SHIMMER

Shimmer (May 17, 2022) by Alex Pugsley has been reviewed by the Toronto Star! The review was posted online on May 26, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Robert Wiersema writes,

“Looking at Shimmer as a whole, one is struck by Pugsley’s mastery of the short-story form, his ability to distil entire lives’ worth of meaning into a few short pages. He’s not just a writer to watch: he’s a writer to savour.”

Steven Beattie also reviewed the story ‘Ordinary Love Song’ from the collection on his blog, That Shakespearean Rag. You can read the full review here.

Beattie writes,

“His story proves that the digital mode of communication, while frequently castigated as impersonal and dehumanizing, can, in the right hands, carry with it strong emotional resonance.”

Get your copy of Shimmer here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. The article was published online May 25, 2022 and in print on May 27, 2022. You read the full review here.

Henry Hitchings writes,

“A bookseller for half a century, [Kociejowski] has encountered a great many strange and rare items. … Full of curious information … Kociejowski is eloquent about the magic of books, their bindings and associations.”

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS

Michael Fraser, author of The Day-Breakers (April 5, 2022) was interviewed by Shauna Powers on CBC Saskatchewan Weekend. In the interview he discusses his collection of poems and the CBC Poetry Prize. The episode aired on May 22, 2022, and you can listen to the full interview here.

The Day-Breakers was reviewed by Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on May 28, 2022. You can read the complete review here.

Frederiksen writes,

“Throughout the collection Fraser uses texture and rhythm to unsettling effect. […] line breaks interrupt the flow of accruing details to hold the reader in the moment of bodily vulnerability as long as possible.”

Get your copy of The Day-Breakers here!

 

Spotlight On: PENINSULA SINKING by DAVID HUEBERT

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Welcome back to our Biblioasis Spotlight Series! For the month of June, we’re featuring David Huebert‘s vibrant and unflinchingly intimate debut collection of stories, Peninsula Sinking (Oct 24, 2017). Don’t miss a brief note from the author below!

PENINSULA SINKING

Winner of the 2018 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction • Runner-Up for the 2017 Danuta Gleed Literary Award • Shortlisted for the 2018 Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction

In Peninsula Sinking, David Huebert brings readers an assortment of Maritimers caught between the places they love and the siren call of elsewhere. From submarine officers to prison guards, oil refinery workers to academics, each character in these stories struggles to find some balance of spiritual and emotional grace in the world increasingly on the precipice of ruin. Peninsula Sinking offers up eight urgent and electric meditations on the mysteries of death and life, of grief and love, and never shies away from the joy and horror of our submerging world.

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. David’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The Walrus, Maisonneuve, enRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries, and anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. David teaches literature and creative writing at The University of New Brunswick.

“A sense of wonderment penetrates the everyday lives of characters from the Maritimes in this well-crafted, compelling collection that displays a mastery of classical short-story structure and technique. Huebert’s vibrant language juxtaposes tough characters with tender preoccupations, creating narratives that are unsettling and mesmerizing, making ordinary moments in relationships thrilling and dangerous.”
—Danuta Gleed Literary Award Jury Statement

 

Photo Credit: Nicola Davison

A NOTE FROM DAVID HUEBERT

Coming Home

When Peninsula Sinking was released, I brought my 3-month-old baby, Rose, on the famous Biblioasis 401 tour, where she attended readings, suckling her mother’s pinkie until it wrinkled and paled and she fell, finally, into stunned sleep. This June Rose turns five, and soon so will Peninsula Sinking, a book that was very much, for me, about my increasingly complex relationship to my home. 

In Peninsula Sinking, I stumbled into ecological writing because it was simply what worked for me. When I wrote about the ocean or an animal—a lonely whale, a stallion sex plane, a beloved dog’s gonadectomy (the euphemism, so appropriately absurd, is “fixed”)—I found that my writing gained a different and new momentum, a lyrical glitter that allowed my prose to rise, raise its hackles, turn around and face me, a strange and sudden creature I scarcely recognized. Eco, the root of ecology and economy comes from the Ancient Greek Oikos, or household. For me, and I think for most, home is very much an environmental concept—home is trees, skies, seas, the particular slump of the mid-morning sun. But I think that home, like the wilderness, is less a place than a psychological state. 

I wrote Peninsula while living in London, Ontario. The stories are mostly set in Nova Scotia, and in some sense I wrote them out of longing for the place where I now sit and write. I live on Chebucto Road, which bears the original name of this place, the Mi’kmaq word Kjipuktuk. Growing up, I never learned that word—a highly tactical obfuscation (I learned plenty about Cartier and Champlain and the Acadian expulsion). From my daughter’s room, I can see the yard of Oxford School, which I attended from primary to grade nine. I regularly walk my daughters past the house I grew up in, just around the corner on Duncan Street. (How strange it is that I can’t go sit in the backyard where I used to pick rhubarb for my mother and let green inch worms swirl through my fingertips). I have come back home, and one might think that I’ve arrived at a resting place. A part of me is deeply soothed by the familiarity of this place I have always loved. In particular, I love the grey, panting days, when it’s not raining but when the air is so salty and dank that an outdoor walk will soak your clothes. I have arrived “back home,” and yet, just as often, I feel ill at ease here. I feel myself a ghost walking through a past life, through the cracked concrete of the school where I wrote my first story (“Big Beard Ben”), where I broke B’s tooth on the wrestling hill and learned about explorers in a transplanted language. 

One layer of my unease, certainly, is an increasing awareness of land theft and genocide and the long, tactical, violent attempt to erase Mi’kmaq culture from this place. But there’s something else too. Something vague and creepy. A malaise. Perhaps it is just a necessary agitation in the feeling of home itself, a longing that refuses to arrive, directed always towards departure or return. I can’t decide, so I suppose I’ll just keep wondering, which is to say wandering, home. 

 

Pick up your copy of Peninsula Sinking here!

Check out David’s latest short story collection, Chemical Valley here!

 

FACTOTUM, SHIMMER, THE MUSIC GAME, POGUEMAHONE, TEMERITY & GALL: New York Times, Toronto Star, and more media hits!

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IN THE NEWS!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been featured as part of the “Newly Released” list in the New York Times and reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. Both articles were published on May 20, 2022. You read the full Winnipeg Free Press review here. You can see the complete NYT list here.

Ron Robinson writes, in the Winnipeg Free Press,

“Bibliomaniacs will find much to warm their hearts as author Marius Kociejowski shares his love of books, travel and name-dropping anecdotes of those famous in the arts and in the antiquarian book trade in England.”

Pick up your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

SHIMMER

Shimmer (May 17, 2022) by Alex Pugsley has been reviewed by the Ottawa Review of Books! The review was posted online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Timothy Niedermann writes,

“Pugsley brings out the confusion of life well. No one is in control. Everyone has doubts about themselves and others. His ability to show the twists and turns of our constant, anxious questioning of ourselves makes each story revelatory in a different way. A truly impressive collection!”

Alex Pugsley was also recently interviewed by Open Book! The interview was published online on May 17, 2022. You can check out the full interview here.

Get your copy of Shimmer here!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont, translated by JC Sutcliffe, has been reviewed in ZYZZYVA. The review was posted online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Sophia Carr writes,

“Clermont’s novel reminds us of the resilience of lifelong friendships and how they can triumph over the darker aspects of life. Any time a group of close friends reunites, even after a period marked by trauma, there is the possibility of finding solace by simply reconnecting with those who knew you when you looked at life through a more innocent lens.”

Pick up your copy of The Music Game here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe (May 3, 2022) was reviewed by David Collard in the Times Literary Supplement. The article was published online on May 21, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Collard writes,

“Poguemahone is, in content and execution, frequently astonishing, and galloping through a very long novel at the rate of three pages per minute is an exhilarating sensory experience. … In its haunting strangeness and blazing originality, [Poguemahone] deserves far more than a cult following.”

Get your copy of Poguemahone here!

TEMERITY & GALL

Temerity & Gall by John Metcalf (May 24, 2022) has been reviewed by Steven W. Beattie in the Toronto Star. The review was published online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Beattie writes,

“[Metcalf’s] exacting eye and his ongoing willingness to call out what he considers substandard, inert, or deadening in our literary culture has earned him opprobrium …
One need not agree with everything [he] says to find much to gnaw on in his analyses of the various ways literary technique and style … are too often downgraded or outright ignored. …
While it’s amusing to wrestle with the temerity and gall of Metcalf’s settled esthetic standards … his achievement in translating this approach into practice as mentor and guiding light is invaluable and we are all in his debt.”

Get your signed limited-edition copy of Temerity & Gall here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS, HAIL THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN, POGUEMAHONE, THE SINGING FOREST, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE: Top Lists and Reviews!

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THE DAY-BREAKERS

The Day-Breakers by Michael Fraser (April 5, 2022) has been featured on the spring reading list by CBC Books as one of “50 great books to read this season.” The list was published online on May 11, 2022. You can read the full list here.

The Day-Breakers was also reviewed by Barb Carey in The Toronto Star. The review was published online on April 28, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Carey writes:

“Michael Fraser brings history alive in his third collection, a stirring tribute to the Black soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War, hundreds of whom were African Canadians. […] The language of the poems is terrific: a fresh, striking vernacular (glossary included) that’s both lyrical and gritty in its immediacy”

Get your copy of The Day-Breakers here!

HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Hail, the Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver (April 5, 2022) was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books! The review was published online on May 2, 2022. Read the full review here!

Maryann Corbett writes:

“They’re all here in her newest book, the formal and metrical pleasures that earned critical praise and prizes for Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway and Let the Empire Down […] Hail, the Invisible Watchman is dark and tangled, even when it hooks the heartstrings and pulls.”

Alexandra Oliver was also interviewed by Sheryl MacKay on CBC North by Northwest! The interview was posted on May 1, 2022. You can listen to the interview here beginning at 4:20, with Alexandra reading at 12:30.

Get your copy of Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe (May 3, 2022) was reviewed by Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. The review was published online on May 6, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Sam Sacks writes:

“Poguemahone [is] an immense, audacious novel […] a volcanic spray of vernacular, Gaelic-infused memory fragments and character sketches.”

Poguemahone was also reviewed by Ian Mond in the print edition of Locus Mag and featured as part of their list of “New Books: 3 May 2022.” on May 3, 2022. Check it out here!

Ian Mond writes:

“Poguemahone is a stunning novel, one of those exceedingly rare books that deserve to be described as a masterpiece.”

Poguemahone was reviewed by Keith Miller in Literary Review (UK). The review, “It Started with a Kiss” was published online on May 4, 2022. You can read the full piece here.

Keith Miller writes:

“I think McCabe is attempting something different from the finely tuned gothic chamber music of his earlier work: he’s aiming for a kind of polyphony. Characters aren’t quite sure who or even how many people they are at any given moment. […] the effect is one of alienation – not that the book isn’t a tremendous pleasure to read, albeit at times slightly uncomfortable. ‘Our national epic has yet to be written,’ all the young literary dudes opine in Ulysses. Poguemahone isn’t ‘about’ Ireland (though it is profoundly ‘about’ the Irish diaspora). But it is a particularly modern kind of epic.”

Patrick McCabe was also featured on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon Podcast on May 3, 2022. Lit Hub featured this podcast episode on May 4, 2022, and Poguemahone was listed on Book Riot as part of: “New Releases and More for May 3, 2022.”

Pick up your copy of Poguemahone here!

THE SINGING FOREST

The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack was recently reviewed in The Miramichi Reader! The article was published online on May 5, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Michael Greenstein writes:

“McCormack revives the secret, hovering between what’s buried and what’s above ground, what sings into a surreal blend. The forest whispers to silence the screams. The children are curious, the reader is curious, and McCormack cares.

“A page-turner with substance, where troubled family trees testify, find new growth, and branch out.”

The Singing Forest was also recently reviewed by the Historical Novel Society. The review was posted online on May 2, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Shauna McIntyre writes:

“Filled with beautiful sentences like “Strands of DNA sliding down an ancestral ladder,” this novel is worth the effort it takes to wade through the stream-of-consciousness sections.”

Order your copy of The Singing Forest here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been reviewed by Michael Dirda in The Washington Post. The article, “What bookstores and the literary life contribute to … life” was published online today, May 4, 2022. Check out the full article here.

Dirda writes:

“Kociejowski opens his enthralling memoir, A Factotum in the Book Trade, by observing that bookstores have begun to follow record stores into nonexistence. “With every shop that closes so, too, goes still more of the serendipity that feeds the human spirit.” While there may be “infinitely more choice” in buying from online dealers, “to be spoiled for choice extinguishes desire.” As he says, “I want dirt; I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery. I want to be able to step into a place and have the sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life.”

An accomplished poet and beguiling essayist (try The Pebble Chance), Kociejowski has also enjoyed a long-standing career with various London antiquarian bookshops […] Over the years, Kociejowski came to be friends with poet and translator Christopher Middleton, travel writer Bruce Chatwin, “arguably the greatest prose stylist of his generation,” and the Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who as the reigning monarch of the joke Kingdom of Redonda, appointed him poet laureate in English of that tiny uninhabited island.”

Marius Kociejowski has been featured on the podcast by AbeBooks, Behind the Bookshelves, hosted by Richard Davies. In the episode, they discuss Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade (April 26, 2022). The episode was published online on May 18, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

In the episode, Kociejowski says:

“The general secondhand bookshop is rapidly becoming a thing of the past […] Whereas I have always maintained that the soul of the trade is in bookshops. I think something happens in shops. Something magical.”

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!