Media Hits: HELLO HORSE, COCKTAIL, COMRADE PAPA, and more!
IN THE NEWS!
Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader! The review was published on August 5, and you can read it in full here.
Reviewer Brett Josef Grubisic writes,
“Restless, exuberant, meandering, funny, inventive, and really quite bonkers . . . Either Kemick is one of those rare, savant-like authors whose outpouring is naturally (and enviably) stylish, or he tempers what seems to be a natural, baroque extravagance with careful, word-by-word revision. Whatever the case, readers will notice—and ought to appreciate—those sentences . . . All in all, Hello, Horse gallops and canters, dazzles and makes a splash. Prepare to be wowed.”
Hello, Horse was also reviewed by Jessica Poon in The BC Review on August 8, which you can check out here. Poon writes,
“Overall, Kemick has balanced visually rich absurdity . . . and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair. This is an unapologetically unique slice of Canadiana.”
Lit Hub also featured the collection on their list of “26 new books out today” on August 6—you can check out the full list here. The list features Burn Man: Selected Stories author Mark Anthony Jarman’s blurb of the collection:
“Hello, Horse is beguiling and wondrous, with talking dogs and nuns at the end of the world, images that linger with strange pleasure; Richard Kelly Kemick is a stellar wordsmith.”
Grab Hello, Horse here!
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) was featured in Quill & Quire‘s “2024 Fall Preview: Short Fiction, Graphic Novels, and Poetry.” The preview was posted on July 31, and you can check out the full list here.
Cassandra Drudi writes,
“The characters in these stories from veteran of the form Caroline Adderson range from thieving addicts to a Russian hit man to a middle-aged man facing a routine colonoscopy. Through these varied characters and their disparate conflicts, Adderson explores happiness—how we find it and what it means when we do.”
Order A Way to Be Happy here!
Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sep 12, 2023) was included in 49th Shelf‘s list of “Short Stories for Summer Reading.” The article was published on August 8, and you can read it in full here.
Danila Botha writes,
“The winner of this year’s Danuta Gleed award, this collection is absolutely masterful. When a writer writes with such precision and authorial control, it’s such a joy to read their work. There’s a stylistic elegance that I admire so much, the way that Alward disrupts domesticity, the tensions inherent in her stories, her expert pacing and her beautiful descriptions are all incredibly impressive.”
Pick up Cocktail here!
Comrade Papa by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne (Oct 8, 2024), was reviewed by Lara Pawson in the Times Literary Supplement on August 1. You can read the full review here.
Pawson writes,
“Only a bold writer in command of their talent could take on such a perilous and vast subject and come out, with laughter and love, on top . . . If you are foolish enough to open this book with a set of assumptions about where it will go, prepare to be wrong-footed . . . Expect to see GauZ’ back on the shortlists with this superlative work of fiction.”
Order Comrade Papa here!
Alex Pugsley, author of The Education of Aubrey McKee (May 7, 2024), was interviewed on Toronto Met Radio’s “All My Books”! The interview aired on July 31, and you can listen to it (beginning at 31:20) here.
Get The Education of Aubrey McKee here!
Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee here!
