Reviews, Awards, and Interviews: CASE STUDY, ORDINARY WONDER TALES, CONFESSIONS WITH KEITH, and more!
IN THE NEWS!
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (November 1, 2022) has been reviewed by Christian Lorentzen in the New York Times! The review was published online on November 1, 2022. Read the full NYT review here.
Lorentzen writes,
“Case Study has a lot in common with the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Roberto Bolaño, in which invented characters pass through tumultuous episodes of literary history that never quite happened, though it seems as if they should have. … Case Study is a diverting novel, overflowing with clever plays on and inversions of tropes of English intellectual and social life during the postwar decades.”
Case Study has been featured on Lit Hub as one of “18 new books to kick your November reading into gear.” The list was posted on November 1, 2022 and can be read here.
Case Study was reviewed by Jessica Brockmole for The Historical Novel Society. The review was published online on November 1, 2022. Read the full review here.
Brockmole writes,
“Case Study is a dizzying dive into British counterculture of the 1960s and the radical anti-psychiatry movement … wildly inventive and slickly written. The notebooks feel so casually and authentically from the period, with ‘Rebecca’s’ word choices and the details she includes saying as much about 1960s British society as they do about her place in it. ‘Rebecca’ is deliciously unreliable as a narrator.”
Graeme Macrae Burnet has been interviewed by Lily Meyer for Crime Reads. The interview was posted online on November 3, 2022 an can be read here.
Meyer writes,
“Burnet propels readers through the novel with his fierce, hilarious intelligence.”
Case Study has also been excerpted in Lit Hub and featured by Vol 1. Brooklyn as part of their “November 2022 Book Preview.” The excerpt, and preview were published online on November 3, 2022. Read the Lit Hub here, and Vol 1. Brooklyn here.
Grab your copy of Case Study here!
Emily Urquhart, author of Ordinary Wonder Tales (November 1, 2022), was interviewed by Lisa Godfrey on CBC Ideas! The episode on hauntings aired on October 25, 2022. Emily’s segment begins at 25:00 mins. Listen to the full episode here.
Ordinary Wonder Tales has been reviewed by Kathleen Rooney in LIBER: A Feminist Review. The review will be published in print in their Winter 2022 issue. Read the full review here.
Kathleen writes,
“In Ordinary Wonder Tales, Urquhart stylishly combines her personal experiences with her academic expertise, leading to a reading experience that feels entertaining and casual yet also edifying … It’s a testament to Urquhart’s own formidable storytelling skill that each of her essays inspires a quiet awe.”
Ordinary Wonder Tales was been listed in CBC Books and Toronto Life!
The CBC Books list, “20 Canadian books we can’t wait to read in November” was published on November 2, 2022. You can check it out here.
The Toronto Life list, “Sixteen things to see, do, read and hear in Toronto this November” was published on October 28, 2022. You can read the full list here.
Order your copy of Ordinary Wonder Tales here!
Luke Hathaway‘s poem “As the part hanteth after the water brooks” from The Affirmations (April 5, 2022), won the Confederation Poets Prize by Arc Poetry. The prize winner was announced on October 27, 2022. You can read the full announcement here.
This year’s judge, Brecken Hancock, had this to say about the winning poem:
“In 12 incredibly short lines, Luke Hathaway has captured how we survive and thrive by chance, by lucky accident. These spare lines take the reader on a profound journey with the speaker who has gone “uphill to the well / where I went, as I thought // for my water” only to find an utterly new form of thirst and its remedy waiting there instead. A previously unrecognized, but life-threatening, form of dehydration is alleviated (in what feels like the nick of time) by the startling discovery of a source to quench it. Rather than dwell on what had previously been missing, a sorrowful lack, the poem ends in affirmation—communicating a resonant relief, and, beyond that, the joy and ecstasy that can finally be embodied and expressed when our deepest needs are recognized and met.”
Get your copy of The Affirmations here!
Confessions with Keith by Pauline Holdstock (October 25, 2022), has been reviewed at Focus on Victoria on October 31, 2022. Read the whole review here.
Reviewer Amy Reiswig writes,
“Confessions with Keith reminds us that life is a raw, radiant, and ridiculous story unfolding moment by moment for everyone in their separate subjectivities. It deserves laughter. It deserves tears. It is made more bearable by books like this, the literary equivalent of uncensored midnight conversation over cups of tea or glasses—plural—of wine. What Vita observes of festival street performers could well be said of reading Holdstock’s newest creation: ‘It was a shared experience of human life, a little bit of eternity together.'”
Confessions With Keith has also been reviewed at the BC Review. Read the whole review here.
Reviewer Candace Fertile writes,
“Things going wrong on many levels is the focus of the novel, but Vita’s ability to plough through the problems and often see the humour even when exhausted is refreshing … Confessions with Keith deals with real life issues in a frenetic and funny manner.”
Get your copy of Confessions with Keith here!
This Time, That Place: Selected Stories by Clark Blaise (October 18, 2022) has been excerpted at Open Book. The excerpt is from the story “Translation” and was published Nov 1, 2022. You can read it here.
This Time, That Place also received a starred review at Quill & Quire. The review was published on November 2, 2022. Check out the whole review here.
Reviewer Steven W. Beattie writes,
“Blaise is … almost preternaturally adept at noticing things … sublime technique and linguistic finesse [are] showcased in these inestimable short works.”
Pick up your copy of This Time, That Place here!
Michael Hingston, author of Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda (September 13, 2022), has been reviewed by MA Orthofer in The Complete Review. The article was published on October 30, 2022. You can read the full review here.
Orthofer writes,
“Try Not to be Strange is an enjoyable account of a bizarre not-quite-real place, with a rich cast of characters—not least Hingston himself, who amusingly tracks his own obsessiveness.”
Michael Hingston has also been interviewed on Across the Pond podcast and New & Used podcast! Both episodes were published on November 1, 2022. You can listen to Across the Pond here, and New & Used here.
Get your copy of Try Not to Be Strange here!
