The Bibliophile: The wonders we can create

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In anticipation of Heaven and Hell’s pub date this Tuesday, we’re following up last week’s excerpt with an interview with Icelandic author Jón Kalman Stefánsson, conducted by publicist and all-star interviewer Dominique.

On another note, if you have any thoughts on what you might like to see in a future Bibliophile—the behind-the-scenes of book publishing, features on backlist or frontlist books, whatever you’re curious about—feel free to reach out and let us know! We want to know what you most want to read about.

Ashley Van Elswyk
Editorial Assistant

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Jón Kalman Stefánsson. Photo Credit: Einar Falur Ingólfsson.

A Biblioasis Interview with Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Heaven and Hell is a testament to the power of literature: tragedy strikes because of poetry, but the boy is also able to find a reason to carry on because of books—in returning the Milton to its original owner and in the company of readers he finds once he arrives. Can you tell us a bit about how books, as well as the friendships and communities that form around books, have changed your life or given you hope?

I was, as a child and a teenager, an eager reader, and for me libraries were places of wonder, adventure, and shelter. I think I was what we could call a born reader: it’s in my blood, the love for literature, this hunger, need, for the worlds and the wonders we can create and find in words. Books were for me both, at perhaps the same time, some kind of get-away transport, and something that enlarged my life and my thoughts. And I believe that one of the main purposes of literature is namely to do all that: enlarge our life, help us to forget our self, make us see the world and our own lives in a new, often unexpected light, help us to travel around the world, get to know other times, different cultures, ideas. Those who read a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and of course poetry, from all over the world, are the only ones who truly can be called cosmopolitans. And those who read little, and perhaps never foreign literature, can be easy prey for populist politicians who get their power from prejudice, discrimination, hatred and fear for those who are slightly different from them; politicians who want us to fear variety, instead of embracing it as we should do.

It’s been a while since Heaven and Hell was originally published in Iceland. Has your relationship to this work changed since the beginning? What does it mean to you now, considering the scope of your work?

Yes, I wrote Heaven and Hell almost twenty years ago, so many things have changed since then: both in my own life and in the world. The book is the first one in a trilogy, and the next two came out in 2009 and 2011, so these worlds travelled inside me for around six years. Since then, I’ve written six novels, and I think that one changes—hopefully—a bit with every book one writes. I have to admit that I seldom think of my older books: they just are there, living their own lives, and have no need for me anymore. They are part of me, but they are at the same time totally independent every time they meet a new reader. I’m fond of them, glad if they are doing well, and hope that they’ll change or affect the lives and thoughts of the readers.

A stack of Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefansson, translated by Philip Roughton. Photo courtesy of our Biblioasis Bookshop staff.

A lot about this book reminded me of epic poetry—the movement of the language (the plentiful, rhythmic use of commas, the repetition of “I am nothing, without thee”), the “hero’s journey” at the center of the book. How important is poetry to your prose writing? Are there any particular poets whose influence you see in your writing?

Poetry is very important to me; I started my writing career as a poet, published three books of poetry before I turned over to prose. In a way, I think that I use, though subconsciously, the technique and the inner thinking of poetry while writing prose; therefore, poetry lies in the veins of my prose. I think as a poet while writing as a novelist. I also see my novels partly as a piece of music, a symphony, a requiem, a rock or hip-hop song. There lies so much music, both in the language and the novel itself: its structure, style, breath. And the structure is for me just as important as the stories; one can sometimes call it one of the characters.

A lot of poets have influenced me throughout time. I read poetry constantly, and never travel without having some books of poetry with me. They can be Icelandic, European, South or North American, Asian . . . and from all time periods. I guess that poets like Vallejo, Szymborska, Borges, Tranströmer, Zagajewski and many more have influenced or inspired me; the same goes for lyrical novelists, like, for example, José Saramago and Knut Hamsun.

I like the coexistence, in the lives of your characters, of the physically rigorous and the intellectual. These characters are in a constant struggle against the elements, but many of them are simultaneously leading these rich, bookish lives. And the books they read (Paradise Lost, for example) seem far less escapist than immersive—like an extra set of eyes over the world. How important is the natural world to the intellectual world of books, and vice versa, in your work?

Books have in my view always been part of life, the world; not something sidelong, but flowing through life, affecting it. We sometimes forget that some of the most famous persons in world history are characters in books, novels: Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment; Don Quixote; Achilles; Oliver Twist; Anne Karenina . . . People who read novels are constantly meeting new people, new characters, who affect them, influence them, move them with their thoughts, words, destiny, in short: become part of their life, their inner world. I sometimes say that what we call reality and then fiction/literature are like a couple dancing together; and occasionally the dance becomes so intense, that they seem to almost melt together and then it’s impossible to see which is which. Therefore: literature reflects life, and life reflects literature.

I think I was what we could call a born reader: it’s in my blood, the love for literature, this hunger, need, for the worlds and the wonders we can create and find in words.

I was in a class once in university where the professor would have us make a playlist for every book we read. I liked that idea, and still find myself doing it. I know that music is very important to you—you created Death’s Playlist for Your Absence Is Darkness, and you’ve written a book about The Beatles. I’m not asking you to create an entire playlist for Heaven and Hell, but does this book (or the trilogy as a whole) evoke any particular songs for you?

Seems to me that this professor did a good job; a wonderful idea! Yes, music is very important for me. I love making playlists, for myself, for my wife and I, my friends, my kids, who influence me all the time by playing for me the music they are listening to. I’m always eager to get to know new artists, both those who are contemporaneous to us, in hip-hop, rock, jazz, classical, and then also getting to know artists and composers from the past. And my novels are often filled with music, references to music, songs that characters are listening to, or it simply comes to my mind while writing, forcing itself into the story, becoming part of it. I’m not sure that there were any particular songs linked to Heaven and Hell, but I think that my running songs from that time—I’m a runner and I always have a special song list for my runs—and while running, my thoughts about the novel I’m working on at that time flow around in me, mixing with the songs, which sometimes affect or create new ideas. And my running songs from that period were for example songs like Jesus of the Moon by Nick Cave; Where is My Mind by Pixies, Back to Black by Amy Winehouse; but while working on the novel songs like Falla by Nana, Aria from Pastorale in F Major by Bach, both played by the great Pablo Casals, and Gnossiennes by Satie; and I guess that the atmosphere of that music coloured, in one way or another, what I was writing, and how.

And we ask this every time, but I always love hearing the answer—what are you reading and enjoying right now?

I’m usually reading many books at the same time, and right now I could name: Human Acts by Han Kang; The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago, one of those authors who has followed me for a long time; I’m reading this book for the second time because I read it in Danish some fifteen years ago, and was very taken by it then. It’s great to read it again, but I’m afraid that I’m a bit more critical towards this fine novel now; Urd by a Norwegian poet, Ruth Lillegraven, a strong, fascinating book of poetry telling a story of two women across different periods of time; The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo, written about 400 AD, a book that has influenced our way of thinking, if not feeling, regrettably in some ways; and then always some books of poetry: Szymborska, Werner Aspenström, a great Swedish poet, and the poems of Enheduanna, the earliest known name in world history, from around 2280 BC, who wrote her poems almost 1500 years before the first letter was drawn in the Old Testament.

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20 Stores for 20 Years: Source Booksellers

After a brief hiatus, we’re starting up our 20 bookstores to celebrate 20 years of publishing posts again! Today, we’d like to celebrate our neighbours in Detroit: Source Booksellers. Owner Janet Webster-Jones spent 40 years as an educator in Detroit public schools before she set up Source’s brick and mortar location in 2002. Janet now runs the store alongside her daughter Alyson, and they are a midtown institution! Read on for why our publisher Dan loves Source, and why Alyson chose The Utopian Generation by Pepetela (trans. David Brookshaw) as her favorite Biblioasis book.

Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells poses with Source Booksellers’ Alyson Turner and Janet Webster-Jones.

Dan on Source Books: I’m not sure there’s a bookseller I admire more than Janet Jones at Source. Whenever I’m feeling exhausted by the state of the world, or the state of the industry, I take inspiration from her example. Now well into her ninth decade, she remains a veritable fount of inspiration, joy, enthusiasm and love, for books, literature, and for her Cass Corridor community. Alongside her daughter, Alyson, a very fine and energetic bookseller in her own right, Source is set to remain an inspiration for years to come.

Alyson poses with her Biblioasis pick, The Utopian Generation.

And here’s why Alyson chose The Utopian Generation: “My heart landed on celebrating the creative and brave translated novels we get from Biblioasis. Yes the Canada Reads ’24 winner in French, The Future, which rethinks Detroit, MI, is a delight to read and sell. Yet another recent release that is hard to put down, The Utopian Generation gives us a peek into an African struggle for decolonization. Bravo to Biblioasis for Twenty Years of indie publishing just across the river!!!!”

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In good publicity news:

  • The Notebook by Roland Allen was reviewed in the New Criterion: “Fascinating . . . [a] wide-ranging and well-researched book.”
  • Your Absence is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (trans. Philip Roughton) was reviewed in The Scandinavia Review: “[An] epic story of love, legacy and grief.”

The Bibliophile: Tell me it’s not healthy to read books

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I wrote a little bit in a previous installment of the Bibliophile about my excitement for Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton, so I’ll keep this intro brief. I don’t think it’d be anything groundbreaking to say that most—if not all, hopefully—of the folks reading this are fans of books, and Heaven and Hell is at its core a paean to the power of books and the friendships and communities that coalesce around them. Stefánnson’s characters memorize lines from a poem before heading out to sea, read to each other aloud to stave off the darkness, and quietly come together to think and dream in silent companionship. They save each other and themselves again and again with literature.

Heaven and Hell is a story for anyone who’s felt saved by books, and we hope you’ll enjoy a glimpse of this in the following excerpt.

Ashley Van Elswyk
Editorial Assistant

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Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson. Cover designed by Natalie Olsen.

The Boy, the Sea and the Loss of Paradise

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Bárður and the boy sometimes catch a glimpse of the group ahead of them and modify their pace in such a way that they draw farther apart rather than closer together, the two of them travel by themselves, it’s best that way, so much that needs to be said intended for just the two of them, about poetry, about dreams and the things that cause us sleepless nights.

They have just crossed over the Impassable. From here it is approximately a half-hour’s walk home to the hut, for the most part along the stony beach where the sea snaps at them. They stand high up on the slope, put off the descent, look out over more than ten kilometres of cold blue sea that tosses and turns as if impatient at the head of the fjord, and at the white beach opposite. The snow never fully leaves it, no summer manages to melt the snow completely, and still folk live wherever there is even a trace of a bay. Wherever the sea is fairly accessible there stands a farm, and at midsummer the little home-field surrounding it turns green, pale green areas of tussocky ground stretch up the mountainside and yellow dandelions kindle in the grass, but even further away, to the north-east, they see more mountains rise into the grey winter sky: these are the Strands, where the world ends. Bárður removes his bag, takes out a bottle of brennivín, they both have a gulp. Bárður sighs, looks off to the left, looks at the ocean itself, deep and dark, he doesn’t think at all about the end of the world and the eternal cold, but instead about long, dark hair, how it blew in her face in early January and how the most precious hand in the world brushed it aside, her name is Sigríður, and Bárður trembles a bit inside when he speaks the name to himself. The boy follows his friend’s glance and sighs as well. He wants to accomplish something in life, learn a language, see the world, read a thousand books, he wants to discover the core, whatever that might be, he wants to discover whether there is any core, but sometimes it’s hard to think and read when one is stiff and sore after a difficult fishing voyage, wet and cold after twelve hours’ working in the meadows, when his thoughts can be so heavy that he can hardly lift them, then it’s a long way to the core.

The west wind blows and the sky slowly darkens above their heads.

Dammit, the boy blurts out, because he is standing there alone with his thoughts, Bárður has set off down the slope, the wind is blowing, the sea churns and Bárður is thinking about dark hair, about warm laughter, about big eyes bluer than the sky on a clear June night. They have come down to the beach. They clamber over large rocks, the afternoon continues to darken and press in on them, they keep going and hurry the final minutes, and are a hair’s breadth ahead of the twilight to the huts.

These are two pairs of new-ish huts with lofts located just above the landing, two sixereens overturned on the beach and lashed down. A large, rough crag extends into the sea just beyond the huts, making landings there easier but overshadowing the main fishing huts, which are a half-hour’s walk away, thirty to forty huts and more than half of them fairly new like theirs, with sleeping lofts, but a number of them from a former time and one-storeyed, the crews sleep and bait the lines and eat in the same space. Thirty to forty buildings, perhaps fifty, we don’t remember exactly, so much is forgotten, confused: we have also learned little by little to trust the feeling, not the memory.

Dammit, nothing but adverts, mutters Bárður. They have entered the hut, gone up to the loft, sit on the bed, there are four beds for the six men and the Custodian, the woman who takes care of the cooking, the wood-burning stove, the cleaning. Bárður and the boy sleep head-to-foot, I sleep with your toes, the boy says sometimes, all he has to do is turn his head and his friend’s woollen socks are in his face. Bárður has big feet, he has pulled his feet up beneath him and murmurs, nothing but adverts, meaning the newspaper published in the Village, which comes weekly, is four pages long, the last page frequently covered with advertisements. Bárður lays the paper aside and they finish removing from their bags everything that makes life worth living if we exclude, in their case, red lips, dreams and soft hair. It’s not possible to put red lips and dreams into a bag and carry them into a fishing hut, you can’t even buy such things, yet there are five shops in the Village and the selection is dizzying when things are at their best at midsummer. Perhaps it will never be possible to buy what matters most, no, of course not, that is unfortunately not the case, or, to put it better, thank God. They have finished emptying their bags and the contents lie on the bed. Three newspapers, two of them published in Reykjavík, coffee, rock candy, rye bread, sweet rolls from the German Bakery, two books from the library of the blind old sea captain—Niels Juel, Denmark’s Greatest Naval Hero and Milton’s Paradise Lost in the translation of Jón Þorlaksson—in addition to two books they had bought jointly at the Pharmacy from Dr Sigurður, Travelogue of Eiríkur from Brúnum and Jón Ólafsson’s textbook of the English language. Sigurður has a pharmacy and bookshop in the same house, the books smelling so much of medicine that we are cured and freed from ailments simply by catching a whiff of them, tell me it’s not healthy to read books. What do you want with this, asks the Custodian, Andrea, picks up the textbook and starts leafing through it. So we can say, I love you and I desire you in English, Bárður replies. That makes sense, she says, and sits down with the book. The boy came with three bottles of cure-all, one for himself, one for Andrea, the third for Árni, who hadn’t arrived yet, same as Einar and Gvendur, they had planned to spend the day visiting various huts, rambling, as it’s called. Pétur the skipper, on the other hand, spent the entire day in the hut, cleaning his waterproofs and rubbing them with fresh skate liver, mending his sea-shoes, went out once to the salting house with Andrea, they spread a sail over the ever-growing saltfish stack, it has grown so high that Pétur doesn’t need to bend over at all while they’re at it. They’ve been married for twenty years and now his waterproofs hang down below, hang among the fishing gear, a strong odour comes off them now but they will become soft and malleable when they set out tonight. A tidy man, that Pétur, like his brother, Guðmundur, skipper of the other boat, about ten metres between their huts but the brothers don’t speak to each other, haven’t done so in a good decade, no one knows why.

A splash of colour greets the reader upon opening.

Andrea puts down the book and starts heating coffee on the stove. There had been absolutely no coffee that morning, which is truly troublesome, and in a short time the aroma of coffee fills the loft, it slips down and overwhelms the odours of fishing gear and unwashed waterproofs. The trapdoor lifts and Pétur comes up with his black hair, his black beard and his slightly slanting eyes, his face like tanned hide, comes like the Devil from down in Hell up here into the Heaven of coffee, with an almost cheerful expression, it’s no small thing what coffee can accomplish. Pétur smiled for the first time when he was eight years old, Bárður once said, and the second time when he first saw Andrea; we’re waiting for the third time, concluded the boy. The trapdoor lifted again, the Evil One is seldom alone, muttered the boy, and the space appeared to shrink after Gvendur came all the way up, so broad-shouldered that no woman could embrace him properly. Einar follows at his heels, half as large, thin but incredibly strong, incomprehensible whence this slender body derives its power, perhaps from savageness, because his black eyes even shoot sparks in his sleep. So there you are, says Andrea, and pours coffee into their mugs. Yessir, says Pétur, and blathered away the entire day. They don’t need an entire day to do that, says the boy, and the mugs in Andrea’s hands shake a bit as she suppresses a laugh. Einar clenches his fists and shakes them at the boy, hisses something so unclear that barely half of it can be understood, he is missing several teeth, his dark beard imposing, grown halfway over his mouth, his ragged, thin hair nearly grey, but then they drink their coffee. Each sits on his own bed and the sky darkens outside. Andrea turns up the light in the lamp, windows at both gables, one frames a mountain, the other the sky and sea, they frame our existence, and for a long time nothing is heard but the surge of the sea and the pleasant slurping of coffee. Gvendur and Einar sit together and share one of the newspapers, Andrea scrutinizes the English textbook, trying to enlarge her life with a new language, Pétur just stares at nothing, the boy and Bárður both have their own papers, now only Árni is missing.

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From the Devil’s “Notes to Self”

A prose poem by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
translated by Philip Roughton

. . . discord, envy, borders, land mines, Trump’s phone number, Orban, Netanyahu and all the rest, burn the Koran in Copenhagen, or just anywhere, remember to buy new trousers, call Mom, more discord, never forget, also national purity, change is harmful, buy an album by the Bee Gees, tell Elon Musk that he’s the best, the smartest, the Great Wall of China’s an awesome idea, use that for a slogan, those who are dissimilar and different are a threat, every person must be his own Great Wall of China, could work as a slogan, a hot idea, remember my appointment with the physiotherapist tomorrow morning, arrogance is absolutely awesome, use it more often, remember praise, great idea to ban books, support it, important to call it by another name, spread that idea, call it thoughtfulness, that books shouldn’t be uncomfortable, the same with theater, music, emphasize that everything should be safe, mustn’t hurt, shock, awesome idea, on a par with the Great Wall of China, remember to buy a bottle of vodka for Dad, praise, jealousy, suspicion, vanity, put them as wheels beneath people, me doing the steering, I think it’s all on the right track, hardly anything that can stop us, more later . . .

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In good publicity news:

The Bibliophile: Like a lock fitting into place

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Want to get new excerpts, musings, and more from The Bibliophile right away? Sign up for our weekly online newsletter here!

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An interview with Hanna Stoltenberg, author of Near Distance

This week marked our first release of 2025—the exquisite, aching Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated from the Norwegian by Wendy H. Gabrielsen. I first read this novel about eight months ago (before I even started working at Biblioasis) and have been eagerly awaiting its publication. Because of all their flawed humanity, the characters in Near Distance—particularly Karin, the cool, often self-absorbed mother—have continued to linger in my life: sitting at the bar across the street from my home, or smoking outside a jewellery shop. Karin’s realness makes her one of the best literary characters I’ve encountered in a while.

I had the chance to ask Stoltenberg a handful of questions, and her responses show a deep level of care to the development of her characters and craft.

Dominique Béchard
Publicist

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Presenting our first book of 2025: Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated by Wendy H. Gabrielsen. Cover designed by Natalie Olsen.

Near Distance begins with a kind of prologue, a brief chapter on the changed relationship between mother and daughter, as portrayed through their smoking rituals; Karin and Helene used to smoke together, but Helene has quit and now Karin smokes alone. I’m always interested in how beginnings become beginnings. At what point in the writing process did this scene appear, or was it the first thing you wrote? What else can you say about the shape of the book and how it came together?

The “prologue” was actually the last thing I wrote. For me the novel began with the image of Karin waking up next to a one-night-stand and walking home alone in the wet snow. The night before I had been out to a bar with some friends and became captivated by a woman who was on a date with a garrulous man she clearly didn’t know well. Every time he left the table to buy drinks or use the bathroom, her expression shifted, becoming softer yet less compliant. Those glimpses of “private faces” in public interest me. The woman walking home developed into Karin, and I began writing scenes from different points in her life: as a young mother, on a family vacation in Germany, during a brief affair, on a “girls’ trip” with her grown daughter. Eventually the relationship between Karin and Helene became the focus point, and my editor wisely suggested I add a scene with Helene in the beginning. After a few unsuccessful attempts I wrote the smoking scene and it was like a lock fitting into place, I knew the novel was finished.

You’ve previously said that Karin is based on fathers you knew growing up—that her character eschews conventional ideals of motherhood and care. Can you say more about how you envision Near Distance as upending or playing with conceptions of gender and emotional labour?

When I started writing about Karin, I was getting to know her and at the same time I felt like I had a deep understanding of who she was. As I moved her through different situations with different people, my main concern was rendering her thoughts and emotions as truthfully and precisely as I could. Which is to say, I didn’t necessarily have those fathers in mind then. Later, however, I thought a lot about how Karin’s and Helene’s relationship is shaped by societal expectations, one of them being that a mother’s love is expressed through tireless devotion and selfless care. Would a different, less fraught relationship have been possible simply by changing Karin’s gender?

It can be difficult to reconcile the idea of care as a natural, authentic expression of love and a moral obligation with the fact that the majority of care work is done by women, whether paid or unpaid. Today, at least in Norway, most couples co-parent 50/50 after a split, but when I grew up “the weekend dad” was the norm. My siblings and I spent every other weekend at my dad’s—the rest of the time, while my mom took care of us, he was free to do as he pleased—and it never made me, or anyone else—question his love or character. Whereas if a mother didn’t have main custody of her children, people would assume she did something horrible. Although parenthood is more equal today, a selfish mother is still considered unacceptable in a way a selfish father isn’t. Rachel Cusk has previously said that in the Outline trilogy she tried to write a female consciousness that is not shaped by oppression. I think it’s similarly interesting to explore female love that is not structured around nurture and care.

Hanna Stoltenberg. Credit: Julie Pike.

How would you like a North American reader to approach your work? What—if anything—should they know about life in Norway and how it might differ from life in Canada or the US?

I believe the themes and subjects in the novel are recognizable and relevant to readers from both Canada and the US, but the wealth and comfort of Scandinavian societies, for me, is significant. The community represented by the welfare state paradoxically relieves us of some of the duty to take care of each other. It also removes a lot of the struggle. Instead, we are free to seek out the meaning of life through individual self-realization, whether that be wellness retreats or erotic desire, which can feel both meaningful and unbearably hollow.

John Self, in The Guardian, writes that your “elegant prose . . . gives plot a bad name.” Near Distance isn’t without plot, of course, but characterization and language seem to be at the forefront. In this way, it could be said to participate in the tradition of writers like Rachel Cusk and Gwendoline Riley. What excites you the most about literature? What are your priorities when writing?

The writer Kathryn Scanlan has stated that she tries “to write a sentence as unbudging and fully itself as some object sitting on a shelf in my office.” That is an ambition I share. I can admire a writer’s intelligence, imagination and sense of composition, but never more so than when it’s on display within a sentence.

I think it’s similarly interesting to explore female love that is not structured around nurture and care.

Atmosphere is important in Near Distance. Critics have described the book as stark, anxious, tense. But atmosphere is difficult to pin down and depends largely on what the reader brings to the work. It’s also interesting how this tense atmosphere counters the novel’s wellness subplot: Helene and Endre’s involvement in the world of self-care. Did you set out to create a particular atmosphere (if so, how?), or did it manifest on its own?

I wanted to observe the contrast between the groping, failing intimacy between mother and daughter and the smooth, commercialized care of strangers, be it on the plane, in the shops or in the world of self-care. In London, Karin and Helene visit a large clothing store and pay for the services of a personal shopper, a young woman named Rosie. With a mixture of standard phrases and feminine efficiency, Rosie establishes a relaxed intimacy with Helene that Karin is completely shut out of. As you point out, how you experience the novel’s atmosphere largely depends on whether you are inclined to read that scene as simply two women shopping—as some readers have—or something more sinister. For me, there is something bleak about how the self-care-industry capitalizes on your most private feelings (shame, self-loathing, loneliness) while also being obsessed with personal boundaries. Like the question posed by a wellness guru in the novel: “If you don’t look after yourself, who will?”

Writing a book is often viewed as an essentially solitary activity. What does having a translator feel like? You speak English, so I imagine that it must feel particularly strange to experience your work through another. Did it ever feel like an imposition? Or was it liberating?

As I said above, when I write I work and rework the language in order to achieve “unbudging” sentences, held in place by rhythm and sound. Sometimes I know the shape and feel of a sentence before I know what I want to say. Like Don DeLillo “I’m completely willing to let language press meaning upon me.” Therefore, being translated can feel like a massive loss of control. When it doesn’t, that is because of Wendy’s attentive and precise work, which I feel very lucky to benefit from. She has managed to transfer the novel’s tone and atmosphere perfectly, and also to create something subtly different and exciting.

Finally, what are you reading these days?

I recently had my second child, and at the moment a novel’s actual weight has become an important factor when filtering through my reading options: I need to be able to hold it in one hand while feeding or lulling a baby to sleep with the other. Luckily, I have much to choose from, as I tend to favour compact narratives. Three slim, but substantial novels I’ve recently read are The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş, Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan, and Famous Questions by Fanny Howe.

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In good publicity news:

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Can)!

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Biblioasis is excited to share that Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize! The longlist announcement was made on January 15, 2025, and can be viewed here.

Originally restricted to books published in the UK, the Prize’s remit was expanded in 2022 by Lori Feathers, who launched a separate award for the US and Canada. About this year’s longlist, she says:

“In its third year, the Prize continues to grow in the number of submissions received from extraordinary small presses in the United States and Canada. As our longlist demonstrates, the work of independent publishing is vibrant and diverse. We are proud to include books in translation, works of innovative storytelling, and publishers new to our longlist. It’s a great time to celebrate the work of these publishers, authors, and translators.”

A total of $35,000 USD will be distributed to the presses and the authors. Each press with a longlisted book will receive $2,000. Five shortlisted books will be rewarded an additional $3,000 each, split equally between publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator where applicable.

A virtual party celebrating the longlist, with publishers, authors, and translators, will take place on Wednesday, February 19 at 6pm CT. Members of the public are encouraged to join for free on Zoom. The shortlist of five books will be announced on Thursday, February 27 and the winner announced on Wednesday, March 12.

Grab your copy of Your Absence Is Darkness here!

ABOUT YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness US and Canada Prize • A World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2024 • A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2024

A man comes to awareness in a cold church in the Icelandic countryside, not knowing who he is, why he’s there or how he arrived, with a stranger staring mockingly from a few pews back. Startled by the man’s cryptic questions, he leaves—and plunges into a history spanning centuries, a past pressed into his genes that sinks him closer to some knowledge of himself. A city girl is drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze, and a generation earlier, a farmer’s wife writes an essay about earthworms that changes the course of lives. A pastor who writes letters to dead poets falls in love with a faraway stranger, and a rock musician, plagued by cosmic loneliness, discovers that his past has been a lie. Faced with the violence of fate and the effects of choices, made and avoided, that cascade between them, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart.

Incandescent and elemental, hope-filled and humane, Your Absence Is Darkness is a comedy about mortality, music, and the strange salve of time, and a spellbinding saga of death, desire, and the perfect agony of star-crossed love.

Photo Credit: Einar Falur Ingólfsson

ABOUT JON KALMAN STEFANSSON

Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature, and his novel Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. He is perhaps best known for his trilogy: Heaven and Hell, The Sorrow of Angels (longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize) and The Heart of Man (winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize). A subsequent novel, Fish Have No Feet, was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017.

ABOUT PHILIP ROUGHTON

Philip Roughton is a scholar of Old Norse and medieval literature and an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, having translated works by numerous writers including Halldór Laxness. He was the winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man, and shortlisted for the same prize for About the Size of the Universe.

THE FUTURE longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou, has been longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award! The longlist was announced on January 14, and can be seen here.

Vancouver Public Library writes in their nominating comment,

“Set in an alternate dystopian French colonial Detroit, destroyed by wars and climate change, Gloria, grief-stricken by the mysterious death of her daughter, comes looking for her granddaughters. In her search for her family, Gloria slowly builds bonds and embraces a new family of survivors. Above all, this novel is about the resilience of relationships and the primal desire to create a new life and community. VPL staff selected this novel because of its inspiring characters and wonderful translation, and it’s demonstrated popularity among our patrons. Catherine Leroux is an award winning author.”

The Dublin Literary Award honours excellence in world literature since 1996. Presented annually, the Award is one of the most significant literature prizes in the world, worth €100,000 for a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English. The Future is one of the 71 books nominated by 83 libraries from 34 countries around the world this year.

The shortlist will be announced on March 25, 2025, and the winner will be announced May 22, 2025.

Get your copy of The Future here!

ABOUT THE FUTURE

Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com’s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of Kirkus Reviews’ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Reviews Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.

Photo Credit: Justine Latour

ABOUT CATHERINE LEROUX

Catherine Leroux is a Quebec novelist, translator and editor born in 1979. Her novel Le mur mitoyen won the France-Quebec Prize and its English version, The Party Wall, was nominated for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Future won CBC’s Canada Reads 2024, received the Jacques-Brossard award for speculative fiction and was nominated for the Quebec Booksellers Prize. Catherine also won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. Two of her novels are currently being adapted for the screen. Her latest book, Peuple de verre, a speculative novel about the housing crisis, came out in April 2024. She lives in Montreal with her two children.

ABOUT SUSAN OURIOU

Photo Credit: Jaz Hart Studio Inc

Susan Ouriou is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation for which she has also been shortlisted on five other occasions. Many of her young adult translations have made the IBBY Honor List. She has also published two novels, Damselfish and Nathan, edited the anthologies Beyond Words – Translating the World and Languages of Our Land – Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec and contributed a one-act play to the upcoming anthology Many Mothers – Seven Skies. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta.

The Bibliophile: 2025 Staff Picks

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In which! The crew of the good ship Biblio sails into the new year with a preview of some of their most anticipated 2025 titles. (Yes, we made them choose. No, they didn’t like it.)

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Vanessa’s Picks

 

Cover design by Kate Sinclair.

Dark Like Under by Alice Chadwick

My new year’s resolution was to not complain about having to choose from among our books, and so I guess that’s all I’m allowed to say about that. Instead I’ll say how excited I am that we’ll be sharing Alice Chadwick’s debut with you. It’s a circadian novel, set over the course of a single day in the 1980s, and it follows a large cast of characters at an elite secondary school in a rural English town as they grapple with the surprising death of a beloved member of the faculty. It’s a book about resilience and connection, systems and resistance, renewal and what we leave behind, and a work of great poetic insight, keenly sensitive to paradox: that the old ways oppress while the ancient can illuminate, that the pastoral can be claustrophobic as well as restorative, that time is both a line and a circle. The form itself works into and against the conventions of Western narrative, the Western mind: in following the hours of the clock, around which human action revolves, we are reminded that although the earth turns circles inside of circles, somehow we still believe we travel a straight line, even in spite of having watched the hands sweep around and around. It’s the kind of fiction, and vision, that is for me the antidote to the disaffected irony and fashionable despair of a great deal of contemporary fiction, a book that risks all those old-fashioned ideas: generosity, forgiveness, love—even hope.

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

On Oil (Field Notes #10) by Don Gillmor

If you’d told me a year ago that I would spend a late afternoon inhaling a nonfiction book about the history and culture of oil in North America, stopping only because it was time for dinner and picking it back up to finish as soon as the dishes were done, I’d have been, admittedly, surprised. But if you’d told me Don Gillmor was the author, I wouldn’t have argued. Gillmor, a novelist, memoirist, historian, children’s author, journalist, and, it turns out, former roughneck, can do just about anything. In On Oil, Gillmor draws on the latter two professions to chart the rise and imminent fall of the oil industry, beginning with firsthand experience on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta and traveling across the continent and then the globe to show the complex and maddening means by which oil has captured government interests and profoundly impacted—for better, and more often for worse—life on Planet Earth. The picture, I found out, is both more and less grim than one might think, but I’ve always been with Francis Bacon on difficult truths: knowledge is power.

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Ahmed’s Picks

 

Cover design by Zoe Norvell.

The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana

This was the first book I read as an official Biblioasis employee and I was floored. It was the prose that first did it, beautifully tense, controlled, electric. And then the questions this novel raises—about masculinity, violence, personal responsibility—all lingered in my mind for weeks after. We follow two young men who hit the road with no real plan other than to get away from their lives and their town. But, moment by moment, we see how they become more and more violent, until they cross a line from which they can never return. It’s all a game to them and it makes you wonder if we could ever learn anything from those who commit such violent acts. There are no neat and tidy answers, but I think that’s what’ll keep me coming back to this book. It’s a tragic story that stays with you because it insists we don’t look away anymore.

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

On Book Banning (Field Notes #9) by Ira Wells

The increase in book bans across the country is startling and alarming. Some people want to ban books with LGBTQ+ characters because they think those books are indoctrinating their children. And some people want to ban classics and important contemporary works because they contain language deemed offensive today. I wonder what books will be left on the shelf. Probably bland ones. With the forces of censorship seemingly getting stronger, I’m really grateful for what Wells does in this short book. It’s both a history lesson and passionate defense for the right to read. From ancient to recent cases, Wells walks us through the history of censorship and shows how and why book bans are making a comeback. On Book Banning is an excellent distillation of how we treat books today and how book bans are connected to the need to control others. It’s a useful reminder of why the freedom to read is crucial and what we lose when it is taken away. A very important read today and, I think, for the years to come.

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Dominique’s Picks

 

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated from the French by Catherine Khordoc

I read Baldwin, Styron, and Me in two sittings; the book’s hybrid form is addictive—it’s at once a memoir of Québecois identity, a literary history of the friendship between James Baldwin and William Styron, and a thoughtful critique of race, cultural appropriation, and the possibility for meaningful disagreement and debate. Abdelmoumen is a champion of resisting certainty, and her commitment to this is refreshing and inspiring (and important as we enter the increasingly politically-fraught new year).

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

UNMET by stephanie roberts

I’ve already read this collection a few times, and it’s impressive. roberts’ poems lean against surrealism without losing their humanity, their creatureness, their affinity for the real. And these sentences are just so pleasurable to read: they sinew and worm into a world-expanding illogic. I’ll be reading her first collection, rushes from the river of disappointment, soon. I’m thrilled UNMET is making its way into the world next year; I think roberts is one of Canada’s best, most original voices.

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) by Ray Robertson

I love reading about music almost as much as listening to it. And Robertson writes from a loving, considerate space that avoids the hyper-analytical, that instead creates a kind of music to live alongside the music. I can tell from this book’s setlist (Alex Chilton, Captain Beefheart, Muddy Waters, etc.) and from his previous Lives of the Poets (which includes some truly beautiful pieces on Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt), that this book will be a fount of joy and discovery for me in the new year.

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Ashley’s Picks

 

Cover design by Natalie Olsen.

Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton

Your Absence Is Darkness was one of my favourite reads of last year, so I was quite pleased to find out that we’re not only publishing more of Stefánsson’s work, but a full trilogy is on the way. Heaven and Hell is a brilliant start to The Trilogy About the Boy, with everything I loved from Your Absence returning here, in perhaps what some might find a more accessible introduction to his writing (translated in excellent form by Philip Roughton). Stefánsson has this way of describing the world—from the way two distant lovers look up at the same moon, to the chill of a stormy ocean soaking a man to the bone, to the slow loss of sight—that really strikes a reader, and makes me consider things in a different way. It’s poetic and straightforward, and complements the emotions woven through the story, of the boy’s struggle with life or death, and the ways in which he connects with the people around him and remembers those who have passed. I look forward to reading more of this journey.

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

Sacred Rage: Selected Stories by Steven Heighton

I first learned of this forthcoming collection of the late Steven Heighton’s stories in the form of a handwritten table-of-contents, passed along from editor John Metcalf, to our publisher Dan, and then along to me—for compilation. Consequently, I’ve gotten to know this collection quite well already, having spent the last few months gradually acquiring, scanning, and cleaning up the converted text of a majority of these stories from older editions without available digital files. Heighton takes his readers across the world, from the back kitchen of a chicken restaurant to an onsen in Japan. Reading a collection in bits and pieces, before it’s been neatly woven together in order and packaged in its usual final book form, is a strange but exciting experience; I can say I’ve read Sacred Rage already in one sense, but what I’m looking forward to most is the day we receive our printed copies in-office, so I can finally sit down and enjoy these brilliantly written short stories—without the need to hunt for missing characters and lost italicizations—and be properly reintroduced to Heighton’s best works.

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Emily’s Picks

 

Cover design by Natalie Olsen.

Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated from the Norwegian by Wendy Harrison Gabrielson

I’m not a reader who is typically drawn to a domestic drama or narrative centered around motherhood. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read plenty of amazing literary books about just these things—but they’re rarely a narrative I find myself naturally delighting in. I was surprised and delighted as soon as I opened Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg (trans. Wendy Harrison Gabrielson). Taut and sparse, it’s the story of a mother (Karin) who has largely opted out of her daughter’s (Helene) life. When Helene asks Karin to travel with her to London, the result is an emotionally tense and very uneasy road trip story. It’s cold, sparse, and elegant, and made me chuckle darkly several times. What luck to start 2025 with such a beautiful and understated bang—Near Distance would have been a one sitting read for me had life not interrupted.

Cover design by Fiachra McCarthy.

Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong

If you read our holiday Bibliophile, you may remember I’m a short story superfan. I won’t wax poetic about the form again, but you need to know that Old Romantics is a remarkably good story collection made even more remarkable by the fact that it’s debut. From the very first story, Maggie Armstrong made me laugh out loud in recognition (I mean we’ve all either been someone or known someone whose terrible boyfriend wouldn’t even chip in for a slice of pizza, right?) Witty and wry, the stories offer a distinctly literary and nuanced take on the popular “sad girl” genre. As I read through, I recognized shades of Fleabag and Halle Butler in the character variations. And impressively, while the stories stand alone taken together they are “a novel in stories” about an artist’s growth and maturity. Every character’s name is an alternative form of “Maggie,” and the reader gets the sense they’re watching the author grapple with Irish patriarchy and history in real time. When you pick up Old Romantics you’re not only picking up a very good book—you get to enjoy the next great voice in Irish literature.

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Dan’s Picks

 

Cover design by Ingrid Paulson.

I’m no more able to tell you what my favourite books for 2025 will be than I was able to declare my favourites from the past year. This is complicated further by the fact that the 2025 list is still taking shape. We’re still reading in the hopes of locating an international title or two for fall, and there are a handful of Canadian titles that may or may not be ready in time for the latter part of the 2025 season. And we have at least one title that we’re not in a position to announce anything about quite yet, though I promise it will stir things up something fierce.

What I can promise is a list that rivals all others before it, brimming with exceptional works of short fiction and novels and poetry and translations and history and cultural and social criticism, our yearly Best Canadian anthologies, and seasonal ghost stories (with a special addition in that department, to be revealed at a later date). It’s a heady mix of the new and familiar. As difficult as it is for me, I won’t repeat anything about the titles that others have highlighted above (except to say that there isn’t a person reading this who shouldn’t have Jón Kalman Stéfansson’s Heaven and Hell high on their to-be-read list: this series, of which this is only the introductory volume, is one of the great modern classics by my estimation, finally available here for the first time). But there are a few forthcoming titles from this fall that most staff haven’t had the opportunity to read quite yet. These include Russell Smith’s long-awaited and quite savagely propulsive new novel Self Care, about a young woman who gets involved, against her better judgement, with an incel; there’s a meditation on the spirit of sport in a new Field Note, On Sports, by David Macfarlane, that captures well my own ambivalence about what has long been one of my very favourite things; there’s a new work of memoir/cultural investigation by Elaine Dewar, tentatively titled Growing Up Oblivious in Mississippi North, about which I should say little else for now; and an important, timely, and moving investigation into the lives of migrant workers in Canada in Marcello Di Cintio’s Precarious. With, as I said, more to come.

Cover design by Kate Sinclair.

The best way to ensure that you don’t miss any of these publications is to either pre-order them from your favourite independent (it’s so easy to do, especially with those shops that use the Bookmanager interface), or to take out a subscription directly from the press: we have several options available, that cover all aspects of our list. There’s no better way to ensure that independent publishers can continue to do the work that we do in this increasingly precarious time.

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In good publicity news:

The Bibliophile: We all went over our assigned word count

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In lieu of an intro: in which we pick our favourite books of the year!

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Vanessa’s Picks

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time may end up being the title of my publishing memoir—this would be an entry in the Act of Ignorant Enthusiasm subgenre that arises from the publication of Dan’s publishing memoir of that name, should we ever find the time to write books—and it’s what I thought when Ashley reminded us we’d agreed we’d all write about our favourite books of the year. How to choose, let alone remember what we’ve spent the last year doing, when my tasks today include the layout for a book that’s coming out in June and compiling a list of the titles we’ll be publishing between September 2025 and March 2026. The truth is that I can’t pick: they’re all good books, and I learned something from each of them, and so in lieu of the usual year-end list, I humbly present: my 2024 Weird Production Superlatives List.

Photo: The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard (trans. by Lazer Lederhendler), May Our Joy Endure by Kev Lambert (trans. by Donald Winkler) and Barfly by Michael Lista.

The Book with the Best First Round Cover Comps: The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler

The Hollow Beast was the first book we did with Jason Arias, who received as a main objective: “Darkly comic adventure: screwball comedy with menace, a la Don Quioxte meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Or Thomas Pynchon done by Looney Tunes.” Jason clearly got the assignment, and it was one of those too-hard-to-choose just one, but eventually we made up our minds. (And Jason would go on to repeat this feat several more times for 2024 titles.)

The Book That Wore It Best, Typeface Edition: Barfly and Other Poems by Michael Lista

I had a tremendously good time in getting to both edit and design (aka: pulling a Steeves) Michael Lista’s long-awaited third collection. It’s typeset in Dante, an old-style serif named for its first use in an edition of Boccaccio’s Life of Dante. Featuring a weary 21st-century traveller beset by torments (buzzing flies, cultural apparatchiks, “belated Anglo-Saxon set on farms,” Anne Carson everywhere!), it’s a ruthless collection, no less so by virtue of the savage wit executed in Lista’s version of terza rima, which is not terza rima at all, but an irregular couplet that wanders and snaps shut like a trap.

The Book with the Best Second Round Cover Comps: May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated from the French by Donald Winkler

I didn’t have to think . . . well, at all about who to send this one to: the amazing Zoe Norvell had already knocked it out of the park with Lambert’s first two books. May Our Joy Endure is a radical departure for Lambert, featuring violence of an entirely different order: the insidious, often beautiful brutality of privilege and extreme wealth. We were slightly stumped on the first round, though Zoe landed on the typeface, Carol Gothic, which she said was inspired by Saltburn. The key: the baroque cover of Lambert-influence Michel Houellebecq’s Serotonin, which reminded us of historical markers of wealth, which Zoe made fresh with what is now a signature Lambert neon yellow.

Photo: Question Authority by Mark Kingwell and The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk.

The Book I Barely Touched But Can’t Stop Talking About: The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk

We shared the text files with Weatherglass, the UK publisher, and our new friend Kate Sinclair gave us that gorgeous cover in a quick second round revision, and I didn’t have to do much other than send it to print. Which has left me free to pitch this book to everyone who will listen: if you like Marilynne Robinson or Zora Neale Hurston, coming-of-age stories or novels of manners, historical fiction about untold lives, Caribbean literature, debut work, or books by brilliant Black voices, this one is for you.

The Book I Think About Every Day, and Not Because I’m Flashing Back to Typesetting 400pp In a Single Day: Question Authority: A Polemic about Trust in Five Meditations by Mark Kingwell

You know those books that split your life into Before and After? This is one of mine. How lucky am I, this and every year, that it’s my job to help make books like these and help to put them in your hands.

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Ashley’s Picks

Photo: Crosses in the Sky by Mark Bourrie and Love Novel by Ivana Sajko (trans. Mima Simić.

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić

Our first title of 2024 was this delightfully acerbic book—short and far from sweet, like a literary sour candy. I read it in an hour on the train while, rather amusingly, sitting across from someone reading a romance. Talk about two very different kinds of love novels! I was drawn in by the tension surrounding this unnamed couple, lovers turned new parents, caught in the deeply unfortunate circumstances of having failing careers in an increasingly unlivable society: rent is past due, they’re scrabbling for odd jobs in theaters and papers, and neither can manage to connect with the other the right way. The emotion of this story was surprisingly relatable in parts, and I’ve found myself going back to it several times this year. This Love Novel may not have a happily-ever-after, but it’s the kind of punch-in-the-jaw book that will linger with you.

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie

As a big history reader, Crosses in the Sky was on my TBR list from the beginning—I then had the pleasure of acting as publicist, so I shall try to keep this piece relatively impartial! What a history this is. Told in a narrative style and utilizing contemporary writings, interspersed with maps and artwork from across the centuries, Crosses in the Sky is the story of how and why the Jesuits came to “New France,” what happened when they arrived, and how these encounters have shaped settler relationships with Indigenous people to this day. I was only vaguely familiar with the story of Jean de Brébeuf, at least the bare bones of his unfortunate end, so I really enjoyed being able to dive into the full story and especially the historical context of Brébeuf’s mission and the Indigenous people who very often get overlooked when this “legend” is told.

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Emily’s Picks

Photo: A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson and A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson

Loving short stories is almost a guaranteed way to get your heart broken when you work in sales. I’ve been a lifetime lover of this genre that suits my busy brain perfectly. What’s better than a skillfully constructed piece of art you can devour before your head hits the pillow or the ice melts in your glass? So it was especially delightful to start at a press this year where the short story is celebrated and sought after. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy was the first story collection I got to read as part of Biblioasis, and it is special. I had never read Adderson before, and was immediately embarrassed I hadn’t read her sooner. She is so obviously a master of her craft. Each story, though varied in time, place, and theme, has a core of empathetic observation. Whether she is writing about people you might avoid eye contact with on the subway, or the inmates of a 19th century asylum, she sketches her characters with a generosity of spirit and humor that shades her darker stories with hints of light. It was a pleasure to “discover” an author I should have known long ago.

A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet

I’m not a mystery reader, per se, but I love a good puzzle, a police procedural, and a tormented main character. While I had read Graeme Macrae Burnet’s books before, I had never read any of his books starring Inspector Gorski until I picked up A Case of Matricide. Gorski seems like a fairly average bumbling small town police inspector at first glance. He’s tired of the social constraints that have kept him where he is, and is in firm denial about his worsening alcoholism. He is also tormented by guilt over a trivial childhood transgression involving his mother’s mustard spoon, and its absence from her table condiment set presses heavily on his conscience to an alarming degree. The cycle of investigations, mustard spoon obsession, too many aperitifs and Friday night dinners crescendo to a reveal so shocking I yelped “what?,” and immediately had to reread a few pages. Throughout the whole story, Burnet expertly weaves in the meta threads he has made his signature. What if this whole story is the found manuscript of an author in the story who is a stand-in for the actual author of the story? And what if it’s a translation? How can we possibly trust the unreliable narrator who is writing and the character who is conveying his thoughts to us, the reader? The answer is never completely clear, but it’s a lot of fun to puzzle out.

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Ahmed’s Pick

Photo: Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (trans. Philip Roughton).

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton

The first Stefánsson I’ve read and one that I’ll prattle on about to anyone who’ll listen. It felt like a dream. A man wakes up in a church with no memory of who he is let alone how he got there with a mysterious man who could be Death or the Devil. I was absorbed from the start. Trying to understand himself, the narrator winds up with a large cast of characters who love deeply in a cold, small part of Iceland where everyone is connected and haunted by their pasts. Stefánsson is able to make you care for every one of them. We move through lives across generations and everyone’s story is so beautifully realized. Reading it felt like I was discovering this strange and wonderful thing and I wanted to stay for as long as I could. But what really gets me about this book is the music throughout it, which unites them and shapes the story. Stefánsson has written a ballad as a novel.

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Dominique’s Picks

Photo: Comrade Papa by GauZ’ (trans. Frank Wynne) and Sorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco Collins.

Sorry About the Fire: Poems by Colleen Coco Collins

This is a startlingly good collection, head-and-shoulders above most recent poetry because it does more than simply put words to use, but actually revels in the strangeness of language. Words from the book will suddenly appear to me while I’m doing mundane tasks like washing the dishes—words like haustoria, dehiscence, weft . . . And I love that these poems encourage a thousand slow re-readings to disinter their thousand possible musics. I read almost one hundred poetry collections this year, and nobody writes like Collins.

Comrade Papa by GauZ’, translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Somehow, I hadn’t heard of GauZ’ before starting work at Biblioasis, but the first few chapters of Comrade Papa immediately felt like a revelation to me. As soon as I finished it, I picked up Standing Heavy. And I intend to read these in their original French because, as someone who’s tried her hand at French to English translation a number of times, Frank Wynne’s talent for transcribing style seems inexplicable—I’m so curious to know what Anouman’s malapropisms (“the lumpenproletariat,” “the retching of the earth,” etc.) are like in their original French. Anyone who isn’t reading GauZ’ (and Frank Wynne) are seriously missing out.

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Dan’s Picks

Photo: The entire Biblioasis 2024 books list.

A decade or so ago, Mark Medley expressed exasperation in the Globe and Mail over my general enthusiasm for our list, writing that “in almost a decade writing about the Canadian industry, [he’d] never met a publisher so convinced of the greatness of their every book; [he’d] grown exasperated with [me] more than once when [I] told [him] that the slate of books the company was about to publish was the “best” [we’d] ever produced.” It seems, Medley claimed, I say the same thing every year.

Perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is true because our list has gotten better every year. Though I fear every year might be the high-water mark, and that there may be no way to continue to sustain what we’ve cobbled together, somehow, with the help of Vanessa and John and everyone else who makes Biblioasis what it is, we pull it off. One of the lessons of this year is that publishing is hard; and, harder to accept than that, that it will always be so; but another is that there’s reason to be constantly hopeful. Despite appearances, we’re nothing if we’re not eternal optimists.

The problem with putting together a year-end list of my favourite books is that, as Mark suggests, most of our books are, in fact, favourites. And never has there been a year where this is more the case. I loved Ivana Sajko’s Love Novel (translated by Mima Simić) for the way that it burned, furious, at the injustices of the world, the only things keeping me from suffocating its life-giving humour and compassion; I loved Alex Pugsley’s The Education of Aubrey McKee for its playfulness and the way that he blended forms in this funny, moving, brilliantly-timed coming-of-age novel; discovering the work of Jón Kalman Stefánsson in Philip Roughton’s masterful translations has been a revelation that has subtly shifted my relationship to word and world, with the exceptional Your Absence Is Darkness only the first of many books by this Icelandic author you’re going to be seeing on our list over the coming years: in a world that continues to shift darker, his words bring much-needed light. I took great pleasure in Richard Kelly Kemick’s inventive horseplay in Hello, Horse; immense joy from Donald Winkler’s fine translation of Kev Lambert’s brilliant third novel, May Our Joy Endure; and was made very happy indeed to finally be able to work with Caroline Adderson on a very fine new collection of stories, A Way to Be Happy. And then, to round out the year, there was Graeme Macrae Burnet’s subtly sideways A Case of Matricide, which has left me feeling shadowed by my own Gorski-like doppelganger all year. And that’s just (most of!) our fiction list!

Our list is not just getting better; it’s also getting broader. One of the things I am most proud of as a publisher is the breadth of our list, that the best fiction and nonfiction rub shoulders almost every month. The past year showed this as well as any year in our history, with Mark Bourrie’s National Bestseller Crosses in the Sky continuing its stylish reconsideration of the history of first contact in Canada; Roly Allen’s The Notebook forcing us to come to terms with the way the smallest, most unsuspecting of inventions has radically helped to reshape the world and how we relate to it; Mark Kingwell’s Question Authority, his most ambitious work of philosophical analysis, by my reckoning, in decades, offering possible remedies for our current addiction to conviction, and a reminder that it’s often in our shared vulnerabilities that we find most strength; and Bruce Whiteman’s Work to Be Done shows him to be one of our most perceptive and elegant critics.

And I haven’t even talked about our poetry list, the Best Canadian series, or the Christmas Ghost Stories (which are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year!). Though, backlist being a fiction, there’s time (despite the end of my allotted word count) yet: if I’m going to make an early New Year’s resolution, as a reader and publisher, it’s to be less prone to the pressures of what’s new and hyped: expect a lot more, in future Bibliophiles, dwelling on the riches of the past, which are as new to you, if you’ve not had the pleasure of reading them yet, as anything else will be.

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In good publicity news:

Media Hits: THE NOTEBOOK, OLD ROMANTICS, CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, and more!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was included in the New Yorker‘s list of “The Best Books of 2024!” The list was published online on December 4, and is available to read here.

The Notebook was also included in the Globe and Mail‘s “Holiday Books Gift Guide for 2024!” The listed was posted online on December 6, and you can check it out here.

Nathalie Atkinson writes,

“[Allen] charts the evolution of notebooks as a repository for thought and follows the crucial role logbooks, diaries and journals have played in humanity’s development.”

Ryan Holiday featured The Notebook in his list of “The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2024.” The list was posted on December 8, and you can read it here.

Holiday calls it,

“[A] lovely book about one of the most transformative pieces of technology ever invented.”

Grab The Notebook here!

OLD ROMANTICS

Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong (Apr 1, 2025) was featured in the Irish Independent on December 4 for the article, “Novels not to be missed,” available to read here.

Aingeala Flannery wrote,

“A dazzling snapshot of Dublin in the early 21st century, full of wry social observation . . . it will appeal to anyone who likes clever, modern, writing about womanhood.”

Preorder Old Romantics here!

QUESTION AUTHORITY

Mark Kingwell, author of Question Authority (Nov 5, 2024), was interviewed by Deborah Dundas in the Toronto Star. The interview was published online on December 7, and you can read it here.

Get Question Authority here!

SETH’S CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories 2024 (Oct 29, 2024) were reviewed in Cemetery Dance. The review was published online on December 4, and you can read it in full here.

Blu Gilliand writes,

“It’s become a favorite December tradition for me—reviewing the new set of Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories as delivered to my stocking each year by the fine folks at Biblioasis. This year’s package contains tales of dread that will raise goosebumps on your arms faster than the coldest winter wind . . . These stocking-sized one-sit reads really are a great way to spend those quiet moments when you can find them among the holiday craziness.”

Grab all three 2024 Christmas Ghost Stories here!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) was listed as a Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2024. The article was published on December 7, and you can read it here.

Justine Jordan writes,

“This fresh perspective on the Windrush generation uses dialect to convey [a] young child’s thoughts with vivid immediacy.”

Grab The Pages of the Sea here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024)was featured in the Toronto Star on December 4, for Heather Mallick’s “Five of my best reads of 2024.” Check it out here!

Mallick writes,

“Canada’s greatest historian has done it for a third time, stripping the carcass of Canadian history and leaving readers horrified, riveted, in shock . . . A triumph.”

Get Crosses in the Sky here!

SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

Sorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco Collins (Apr 2, 2024) was included in the California Review of Books’ “31 Outstanding Poetry Books from 2024,” which you can view here.

David Starkey writes,

“Readers interested in entering [Collins’s] manically creative world must be prepared to relinquish their preconceptions of how words and sentences ought to be linked together.”

Get Sorry About the Fire here!

The Bibliophile: Holiday Haunting

/in , /by

Want to get new excerpts, musings, and more from The Bibliophile right away? Sign up for our weekly online newsletter here!

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10 Years of Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories

Ten years ago, Biblioasis partnered with world-renowned cartoonist Seth to resurrect the Victorian tradition of telling ghostly tales during those dark winter nights around Christmas time. Beginning in 2015 with The Signalman, by (who else?) Charles Dickens, and expanding through the years with stories from writers such as Shirley Jackson, M. R. James, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Seth has brought to life a series of beautifully selected and illustrated, pocket-sized volumes that’s grown into a beloved staple of many readers’ holidays. One of the perks of acting as publicist for this series every year is seeing the excited responses from readers and reviewers alike when they learn the newest trio has arrived.

Photo: The 2024 Christmas Ghost Stories illustrated by Seth include Podolo by L. P. Hartley, Captain Dalgety Returns by Laurence Whistler, and The Amethyst Cross by Mary Fitt.

The development of each of these little books spans several months: they’re chosen by Seth early on in the year, and then the text is dug up from online archives or, in some cases, transcribed from the pages of decades-old collections, by myself. Two of this year’s stories, Podolo and Captain Dalgety Returns, required permission from the authors’ estates, both of which were glad to see their loved ones’ works continue to find new homes. It’s a joy to get the chance to read these old stories, and working on the series has given me a renewed appreciation for the many different variations of horror, and also introduced me to works I likely never would have heard of otherwise. Gradually, the evocative illustrations are completed and the books expertly typeset by our managing editor, Vanessa, so that by the time late summer comes to an end, three new stories have joined the Haunted Bookshelf.

In celebration of the Christmas Ghost Stories anniversary, I had the opportunity to interview Seth, whose love of Victorian ghost stories and thoughts about the series after ten years we’d like to share here today. So pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate, settle in, and enjoy a little spookiness with your holiday cheer.

Ashley Van Elswyk,
Editorial Assistant

***

A Biblioasis Interview with Seth

Photo: World-renowned cartoonist Seth, 2019. Credit: Samuel Sanchez.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol often comes up in relation to your Christmas Ghost Stories series, and I think that’s what most people go to first when they think of a Christmas ghost story. But where did your own interest in Victorian ghost stories come from? Have you always been drawn to them, or did you learn about the surrounding traditions and develop a fascination from there?

Y’know, it took me a while to even make that Christmas Carol connection myself. That story is so familiar now that it takes a moment to step back and see it, in a fresh light, as a ghost story rather than simply a redemption story. But, let’s put that aside because, clearly, the Christmas Carol has very little to do with my interest in the Victorian ghost story. Looking back, I really owe this interest to Edward Gorey. When I was a young cartoonist, just finding my way in the early 1980s, I had discovered several great cartoonists who were super famous but brand new to me at the age of twenty-one (or so). One of these was Edward Gorey and I adored his work (still do). So naturally I was purchasing anything of his I could find (or afford). One thing that crossed my path was a collection of Victorian ghost stories he’d edited and illustrated called The Haunted Looking Glass. The copy I found was remaindered in Edwards Bookstore (a long defunct but wonderful Toronto bookstore) for about a dollar. I bought it for the drawings and didn’t read it for a couple of years, but when I did read it I was quite frightened by the stories. I’m not kidding here. I read them at bedtime and I found a couple of them downright scary. Like, don’t go to the bathroom alone scary! This seems funny to me now because I don’t find too many of these old ghost stories all that frightening any longer. My appreciation of them is more complex than that nowadays. That said, a good creepy image is always essential to a good ghost story.

But anyway, after reading that book (with such limited knowledge of the history of the genre) I just kind of figured . . . “well, that’s all the Victorian Ghost Stories there are.” I moved on. A few years later I found another anthology, and then another, and in no time I realized I was looking actively for classic ghost stories, and that is when I started to dig around and learn the history and get a real scope of how many of these stories were written, and why they were written—to be read at Christmas! Today I understand that the genre is huge. We will never run out of wonderful old ghost stories.

So you’ve read a great number of classic ghost stories now, from England to Canada and beyond. What elements make a story stand out enough for you to select it for your series in particular?

Well, the most boring prerequisite for the series is length. It can’t be too long and it can’t be too short. Surprisingly, this removes a great number of excellent ghost stories. I often read a story and while reading it, pray earnestly that it is not going to turn out to be too long or too short. But setting aside that prosaic element, I will say that the number one thing I am looking for is atmosphere. I like a ghost story to be both eerie and cozy. This may sound like an odd combination but I think it is the essential quality of a classic ghost story. Modern horror tends to be more visceral. Often trying to be uncomfortable—or even aiming for the repugnant. It goes for the guts. I’m more tender-hearted, even a bit squeamish. I like the kind of story that merely sends a chill up the neck or even just elicits a feeling of immortal melancholy. The classic ghost story is related, somewhat, to the classic era of detective stories (think Agatha Christie). Those stories are not hard crime cases. They are not hard-hitting police procedurals. They are cozy crimes set in comfortable upper middle class dining rooms. There is some cross over with the old classic ghost stories. They are meant to unsettle . . . but not so much as to make you feel ill. I am generalizing here, I can immediately think of exceptions, E. F. Benson’s grosser tales for example, but for the most part what you are reading in a classic ghost story is an extension of the gothic tales of a century earlier. Stories about dark corridors and empty moors. Stories about dusty secret histories found in dusty libraries. Even in the more modern of these kinds of tales you will find that the locations may have changed (a country estate house might become a Canadian farm house) but the dark hallways and the fleeting figure are still there. At least in the stories I like and choose for the series.

Photo: An eerie scene from Podolo, illustrated by Seth.

Is there a story, or even a particular writer, you’ve really wanted to select for the series but haven’t been able to or had a chance yet? Perhaps one a little too recent, or too long, as you’ve mentioned?

There are dozens of stories I have x-ed off the list for those reasons (and others). Sometimes it’s a heartbreak. There was such a one by H. Russell Wakefield called “Blind Man’s Buff” that I found really chilling and perfect for the series . . . but far too short. Just a few pages. Recently there was a story by Edith Nesbit (if memory serves) that I liked quite a bit—very weird and moody—but it had some rather dated race-related writing in it, and while I am not about censoring the past, I decided to pass on it. This brings up a point. Should the past be cleaned up or suppressed when its values do not meet our current values? And the answer is obviously no. So, how do I square passing up this story? The answer is surprisingly easy. If I were doing a multi story volume I would have included it without much worry. However, when you select a story to stand alone in a single volume, you are placing a stronger focus on that story, and while not exactly giving these dated qualities a stamp-of-approval you are putting them out there with very little context and giving it centre stage . . . and that that gives me a little pause. To be honest, I wouldn’t have lost much sleep selecting this story—it was a minor quibble over a single reference to a dated bias—just enough to make you cringe—but not enough to make you put the book down as irredeemable. Still, for this format—why not simply pick a work that causes no such distress? I may still use one of her stories. “Man Sized in Marble” is an excellent ghost story.

Another reason for not picking something is availability. I really wanted a story by Robert Aickmann but I don’t think (again, if memory serves) a deal could be worked out with the estate. Bummer. Another criteria, they must be supernatural! Often, when reading a story I will be thinking, “here is a winner,” and then at the very end it turns out to be a Scooby-Doo (not a real ghost). What a let down. Story cancelled.

Finally, not just supernatural—but a ghost (or ghost-ish). So, no vampires, no werewolves, no mummies etc. !!!

Were the books always intended to be partially illustrated the way they are, or, given your extensive work in comics and graphic novels, did you ever consider fully illustrating the short stories at any point?

I never considered fully illustrating these books like a graphic novel. Not because it wouldn’t work (it certainly could) but mostly because of two simple reasons. One—I don’t want that much of myself front and centre in these books. I want the stories to live inside their own reality. In other words, my own style would get in the way for the reader who is imagining things themselves when they read it. The way it was meant to be. This is essentially why I try never to draw any of the characters from the stories and, if possible, I only hint at the ghost itself. I think these elements should be supplied by the reader’s imagination. As the series has gone along I have tried, more and more, to simply supply decorative drawings of the locations of the events in the story. And little else. The second reason, two—drawing a comic version of anything is very laborious and takes a lot of time and effort. Instead of three little ghost books each year you’d end up with one every four years (if you are drawing comics at my pace!). It just isn’t realistic for me. Ultimately, even setting aside the time concerns I think these little books work best when they are minimally decorated. I don’t want the drawings to intrude—I try to not even draw events from the story—I only wish to stimulate the imagination—not supersede it.

Could you talk a little more about your illustrative process? For example, what goes into deciding which scenes to illustrate, or how you choose which elements or settings are the best fit for one of the iconic covers?

It’s pretty straight-forward at this point. In the earliest volumes of the series I struggled a little more with what to draw. Mostly because I was trying, for a few books, to illustrate the story. I don’t do that any longer. As I mentioned before—I’m only setting the stage for the ghost tale now. So, when I read the story I list the places the story occurs. If there is more than one location, I try to draw them all. Ideally, you have four spreads, each with a different place that shows up in the story. Sometimes that’s not possible because the setting is more limited so I’ll have to improvise a bit. Maybe an exterior shot and an interior shot and then a couple of evocative images—say an important detail—like a window the character peers out of. Something. Anything but simply illustrating an event in the story. The key thing is, while reading the story, I try to pick up on a few evocative images but nothing that is crucial. Mostly landscapes. Occasionally objects. Never the main characters. Almost never the ghost (though sometimes you can’t avoid drawing the ghost!). With the landscapes I try to keep them mundane . . . but also to infuse them with a little bit of creepiness. Mostly this is done by giving a cloudy sky or by the mere emptiness of the scene.

Photo: Aftermath of a fright in Captain Dalgety Returns, illustrated by Seth.

For the covers I have a slightly different approach. Here I am less worried about being literal. The covers are often very literal. The Amethyst Cross has an amethyst cross on it. The House By the Poppy Field has a house by a poppy field. The Sundial shows a sundial. Now, obviously, they don’t all work out so nicely and simply. Sometimes you have to search for an image—for example Podolo has a kind of cat demon icon for the cover. It is entirely unliteral (no such image occurs in the story) but I am trying merely to capture a flavour or tone of the book and sometimes you have to root around to find something that grabs. This “grabbing,” of course, is the main graphic element of these little covers. They have to be iconic (because they are tiny books) and they have to be punchy so as to grab the eye and make you look at them. I try to keep them as brightly coloured and dead simple in design as possible. Like a matchbook cover. Bold, uncluttered, and clean. Also, and this is my own concern, I don’t want them to look like the covers of almost all ghost books from the past. In other words, I don’t want fussy drawings that suggest old steel engravings. Most ghost story illustration goes that route. So, for me, I lean into my own style but also make it as perfectly clean and crisp as I can. Doing, in my opinion, the opposite of what is expected of a ghost story image.

What’s surprised you the most about the series, as you celebrate its tenth anniversary? It’s been featured in publications from the Globe and Mail to the Washington Post, and every year we hear from people who have now taken to reading them at Christmas with their loved ones. Did you ever imagine it would grow to be as beloved a tradition (again!) as it is today?

As always, sitting here in my basement studio, I feel rather detached from whatever I do once it goes out into the world. Even reading reviews or reader’s opinions doesn’t connect somehow. I suspect this is because I am aware that the life of a book (or a series) is usually something the creator or editor (or whatever) never gets to know. What I mean by this is that most of the readers will have a private experience with the work and never put out a “report” that you can read. I know, for myself, that the books and films and comics and paintings I love most in the world are a private experience. I haven’t spent any time reviewing them on Goodreads or writing blogs about them. The authors (should they be living) would never know how much pleasure they have given me. So, I take it upon routine that I will never know who really felt what about anything I am working on. Not in the true sense. But, to try and answer your question—the thing that has surprised me the most is simply that ten years have gone by (in a flash) and that there are more than twenty of these little books now. That makes me happy. I like to see them piling up.

And finally, do you have a favorite ghost story out of all the ones you’ve selected for the series so far?

That’s a tricky question. I like different stories for different reasons.

I’m fond of The Toll House because I find it quite scary. I like The Apple Tree because it is uncomfortable. I like Morgan Trust because it is so charming. As you can see I could probably give a little reason for every selection of why they might be a favourite. I guess, if I had to pick I would select The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance by M.R. James. Selecting James is a no-brainer since he is generally considered the ne plus ultra of ghost story writers . . . but I like this one so much because it is very odd and has, at its centre, an ugly dream that is very effective. One of those perfect stories that works best in the mind of the reader and would probably fail as a movie because you’d ruin it by nailing the imagery down too clearly. It’s creepy.

***

Subscriptions update!

A late arrival to the subscription box offerings is here: the inaugural Choose-Your-Own Club! For the reader who’s firmly decisive, can’t be constrained to one genre, and doesn’t need any more surprises. Pick any five Biblioasis titles you want from our 2025 list—for yourself, or as a gift for a loved one.

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20 Stores for 20 Years: Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry

Photo: The welcoming storefront of Mac’s Backs Books

A book lover’s dream, Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry is located in Cleveland where they boast three floors of new and used books. They are truly a community book store, and offer a free meeting space to local organizations. Learn more about what our publisher Dan appreciates about Mac’s Backs-Books and bookseller extraordinaire Grace Harper, and why Grace chose A Ghost in the Throat as her top Biblioasis pick.

Dan on Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry: “Though Cleveland is only a few hours from Windsor, I’ve only been a couple of times, and on neither occasion had the chance to hit a bookstore, Mac’s Backs or otherwise. But if I am to judge a bookstore by the quality of its booksellers—as we should: bookstores are only as good as the booksellers who work in them—then Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry must be in the top ranks. Our main contact there has always been Grace Harper, who is a super-reader, ranging widely across almost every conceivable genre, and writes with the insight of the most generous readers and critics. Last year, she made the trip to Windsor to see our own store; we’ll soon have to return the favour!”

Why Grace Harper thinks A Ghost in the Throat deserves a spot on your TBR list: “This is a female text.” This declaration is stated and restated throughout Doirann Ní Ghríofa’s fierce treatise. The focus is a poem by eighteenth-century Irish noblewoman Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, who, on discovering that her husband had been murdered, drank handfuls of his blood, then wrote an epic lament about him. Part memoir, part historical fiction, part literary criticism, the book relates Ní Ghríofa’s obsessive quest to find out about this remarkable woman. Between changing diapers, nursing, cooking, and laundry, she researches, translates, and writes. Little is known of Ní Chonaill’s life, so Ní Ghríofa is left to imagine, to dream, to speculate, and to invent her character. In the process, she finds a kindred spirit, one whose pain flows like her own mother’s milk. The poem, a banshee’s wail of anger and deep sorrow, is printed in its entirety. This achingly personal book will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.”

Photo: Bookseller Grace Harper holds her Biblioasis pick, A Ghost in the Throat.

***

In good publicity news:

Media Hits: THE NOTEBOOK, QUESTION AUTHORITY, CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, and more!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was featured in The New Criterion on November 26. The feature is available to check out here.

Robert Erikson wrote,

“Ranging from thirteenth-century Florence to twenty-first-century Florida, Allen’s account is a delightful mix of material and intellectual history.”

The Notebook also appeared in The 2024 Kleon Studios Gift Guide by Austin Kleon. The guide was posted on November 29, and you can browse it here.

Get The Notebook here!

A CASE OF MATRICIDE

A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Nov 12, 2024) was reviewed in the New York Times! The review was published online on November 25, and can be read here.

Sarah Weinman wrote,

“You can gulp down A Case of Matricide in one sitting, as the prose style seems to demand. But linger over Burnet’s novel, and its real pleasures emerge.”

Get A Case of Matricide here!

QUESTION AUTHORITY

Mark Kingwell, author of Question Authority (Nov 5, 2024), gave a number of interviews over the past week. In print, Kingwell was interviewed in The Jacobin and The Varsity, and he also appeared on an episode of TVO’s The Agenda.

Get Question Authority here!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

Anne Hawk, author of The Pages of the Sea (Sep 17, 2024), was interviewed on CBC’s The Next Chapter! The interview, in which Hawk discusses code switching and the cost of migration for a young Caribbean girl in her debut novel, aired on November 22, and is available to listen to here.

Get The Pages of the Sea here!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader. The review was posted online on December 1, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer Catherine Marcotte writes,

“A Way To Be Happy is deeply contradictory in the best possible way, insisting at every turn that regardless of its title, there is, luckily, no such thing as a singular way to be happy.”

Get A Way to Be Happy here!

SETH’S CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories 2024 were featured in Boing Boing! The article was posted online on November 25, and you can read it here.

Mark Frauenfelder writes,

“This year marks the 10th anniversary of these beautifully designed pocket-sized books . . . As someone who has collected these books for years, it’s exciting to get three more of these pocket-sized treasures.”

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories were also recommended by Tom Bowden in the Book Beat! The review was published online on November 23, and you can read it here.

“Illustrator Seth returns for the tenth year with a new batch of ghost stories originally written and published for the Christmas season . . . each story printed as a pocket-sized book taking about a half hour to hour to read, focusing on eerie and macabre (but never gory) tales of misadventure with bad spirits.”

Get all three 2024 Christmas Ghost Stories here!

1934: THE CHATHAM COLOURED ALL-STARS’ BARRIER-BREAKING YEAR

1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs was featured in an episode of CBC Ideas about the team.

The episode aired on November 25, and is available to listen to, alongside a full article, here.

Get 1934 here!