Media Hits: HELLO HORSE, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, and more!
IN THE NEWS!
Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024) was reviewed in the Globe and Mail! The review was posted online on May 31, and you can read the full piece here.
Critic Emily Donaldson writes,
“‘It’s always more important to feel things than to understand them,’ our priest-cum-devil says to the narrator at one point. That’s useful advice for approaching Your Absence Is Darkness, which feels, in a sense, like it teaches us to read it as we move along—if you’ll indulge me—as an earthworm might: blindly burrowing and occasionally moving toward the light.”
Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!
Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews! The review, which will be in their July print issue, was published online on May 31 and can be read here.
Kirkus writes,
“The tales here mix whimsy, weirdness, lust, and Canadian politics, bringing to mind George Saunders and the slackers from Wayne’s World . . . He has a penchant for alternating between things familiar and bizarre . . . Provocative, entertaining short fiction.”
Order Hello, Horse here!
Barfly by Michael Lista (June 4, 2024) was reviewed in The Walrus, in a critical essay by Nicholas Bradley. The review was published on May 31, and you can read it here.
Bradley writes,
“Lista’s poems . . . are fun, completely miserable, and almost certainly bad for you. Barfly should be affixed with a Health Canada warning. You must be nineteen or older to purchase this product. Not safe in any amount. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Order Barfly here!
Alex Pugsley, author of The Education of Aubrey McKee (May 7, 2024), was interviewed on the Across the Pond Podcast. The interview was posted online on May 30, and you can listen to it in full here.
Host Lori Feathers states,
“This book captures the youthful impatient desire for excitement and experience and also the disillusionment that encroaches on this desire over time.”
Pugsley was also interviewed on CBC Here and Now‘s Tuesday Afternoon Book Club, which aired on May 28. You can listen to the segment here.
Ramraajh Sharvendiran calls the book,
“A love story inspired by the author’s own lived experience that takes us back to the city of Toronto at a time (the 90’s) when it felt more supportive of artists.”
Get The Education of Aubrey McKee here!
Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here!
The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was published online on May 25, and you can check it out here.
Critic Sheldon Birnie writes:
“While The Hollow Beast itself is a beast of a novel, despite its hefty page count it moves along at a leisurely clip, as though the reader is hearing the tall tale around the table at the local pub or late at night in the kitchen during a house party, with the lilt and cadence of an eloquent and well-soused Francophone, peppered throughout with allusions to Quebec history, Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All and the Montreal Canadiens, among others.”
Grab The Hollow Beast here!
