Description
PRAISE FOR MARTIN JOHN
“Dazzling … With its discomfiting portraiture … brain-puzzle of a storytelling technique, and utter assurance, Martin John easily matches the tremendous promise of Malarky, Schofield’s debut.”
—Maclean’s
“Brilliant … While Schofield has digested all of postmodernism’s tics and tricks, her writing is fundamentally empathetic, and the various interventions feel like necessary attempts to render the unspeakable, rather than as flashy mystifications of a straightforward narrative. In its social critique, Martin John has much in common with the brilliant journalism of Ann Brocklehurst and Ed Tubb, but as an avant-garde novelist, Schofield is in a class unto herself.”
—David B. Hobbs, The Globe & Mail
“Exhilarating … The weird and recursive prose makes the language startlingly vivid, and Martin John’s fractured narrative perspective is positively adrenal … Schofield’s ability to get us jacked up from exquisitely written and deeply troubling jokes about a middle-aged public masturbator makes [her] one of the highest-flying and funniest working today.”
—Emily Keeler, The National Post
“The novel all your favourite novelists will be reading.”
—Mark Medley, The Globe & Mail
“Virtuosic … [Schofield] has crafted a wholly believable journey into the mind of a deeply warped young man … An astoundingly focused piece of writing.”
—The Georgia Straight
“Schofield’s trademark Celtic-Gothic sensibility is evident once again as Martin John explores madness, dark comedy, isolation and sexual compulsion.”
—Toronto Star
“Fearless … Pick [up this book] if you are enthralled by what the novel with its variable and elastic form can do as Schofield pushes the boundaries in careful calibrations of narrative structure and language that bites.”
—The Vancouver Sun
“[A] stylistically audacious second novel.”
—Steven Beattie, Quill & Quire
“Effective and captivating … The author’s tone in these segments is coolly detached and nearly journalistic, generating in the reader a sensation of voyeurism that is profoundly unsettling and in keeping with the experience of reading Martin John.”
—Shawn Syms, Quill & Quire
“Profane, strange, hilarious, and necessary, Martin John is a beguiling triumph.”
—Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
“This is a very moving and terrific book.”
—Daniel Handler, author of We Are Pirates
“Conveyed in hilarious, deadpan beautiful prose … Schofield’s first achievement is to burrow into Martin John’s rackety mind. Her second crucial achievement is to turn this unsettling apprehension into a necessary, extraordinary act of empathy.”
—Alison Gillmor, The Winnipeg Review
“Humorous … fast-paced … for a novel about a sexual deviant, Martin John is positively breezy.”
—Pickle Me This
“This is literature serving its most essential function: illuminating the darkest recesses; dragging the unspoken and suppressed to the foreground of our consciousness; throwing light across the blackest of humanity’s vistas. This is writing at its most fearless: visceral and searing, yet textured and nuanced; the darkest of comedy and the deepest of insight, combined in a manner unique to Anakana Schofield.”
—Donal Ryan, author of The Thing About December and The Spinning Heart
“You might hold your breath while reading this novel. The story transgresses the body with or without our permission, and illuminates important ideas we ordinarily look away from. And yet it is now, more than ever, that we need to reread the body.”
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water
“Martin John is singular in contemporary literature. [The novel takes] a deeply imagined, almost operatic view of marginal characters trapped in the absurdities and perversions of systems: mental, social, and familial. Anakana uses devastatingly specific prose that conversely portrays the poetry of human suffering. Moving, profoundly human, insightful, and darkly humorous.”
—Thalia Field, author of Bird Lovers, Backyard
“Anakana Schofield’s first book, Malarky, was one of my favourite books last year. This one is different; it is darker, creepier. But it is every bit as clever and bold.”
—Consumed by Ink
PRAISE FOR MALARKY
“Caustic, funny and moving.”
—Emma Donoghue
“Electrically alive.”
—Colum McCann
“A fine book.”
—Margaret Atwood
“Quirky, racous, and utterly unconventional.”
—Reader’s Digest
“Potent and fresh … In certain moments, we are not so far from Beckett’s Molloy … Our Woman comes close to enlivening not only the political and the personal but also the human.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Delightfully offbeat … Schofield offers a deft — and altogether welcome — comic touch … One of the season’s best reads.”
—The National Post
