POGUEMAHONE, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE, SHIMMER, ON DECLINE, CHEMICAL VALLEY: Interviews, Reviews, and Awards!

IN THE NEWS

POGUEMAHONE

Patrick McCabe was interviewed by Neil Wilson for The Ottawa Writers Festival podcast. In the interview, he reads from and discusses Poguemahone (May 3, 2022). The interview was published online on June 8, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

In the interview, McCabe says,

“It is not about the Winter of Discontent […] or English politics or Irish troubles […] but it is really about the secret, mysterious currents that govern everything, that we don’t understand.”

Patrick McCabe was also interviewed by Sam Jordison and Lori Feathers on the Across the Pond podcast. In the interview, he reads from and discusses Poguemahone (May 3, 2022). The episode was published online on June 14, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

In the interview, McCabe says,

“Often, when you tear things up, some tiny flicker happens. It could be out of a hundred pages, you get a collocation of words or a combination of sentences and something triggers in you: “Ah, that is what the book is about.” And you don’t quite know, but you start writing again. […] The first draft is trying to find out: what is the stone in your shoe?”

Pick up your copy of Poguemahone here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been featured in the “Summer Reads 2022: Books About Books” list in Fine Books & Collections Magazine. The list was published online June 8, 2022, and printed in the June edition. You read the full list here.

Rebecca Rego Barry writes,

“Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade (Biblioasis, $18.95) is the wistful memoir of a Cecil Court bookseller who both charms readers with anecdotes about Patti Smith and Martin Stone and also wallops them with statements such as ‘the antiquarian book trade is slowly but surely destroying the antiquarian book trade.’ A Canadian who emigrated to London, Kociejowski plumbs his experiences in the English book trade during the eighties and nineties—the major players and massive changes—and reflects on what is slipping away. He writes, ‘I want dirt; I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery. I want to be able to step into a place and have the sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life.’ Agree.”

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski has been reviewed by David Moscrop in the Globe and Mail. The review was published online on June 10, 2022. You read the full review here.

Moscrop writes,

“Reading Marius Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade is like walking through an endangered species of bookstore … [It] is cranky, obscure, charming, … and illuminating. It reads like a used bookstore smells. … Go open this book and see where it takes you.”

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski has also been reviewed by Laurence Worms, of Ash Rare Books, on his blog: The Bookhunter on Safari. The review was published online on June 10, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Worms writes,

“It is enviably and beautifully written, full of memorable flashes of description, bringing characters to life in a phrase … It is unquestionably the best-written account of the modern rare book trade you could hope to find.”

Pick up your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

SHIMMER

Alex Pugsley, author of Shimmer (May 17, 2022), was interviewed by Junction Reads for their series, ‘The First Thirty’. The interview was posted online on June 9, 2022. You can watch the full conversation here.

Yesterday on June 14, the launch of Shimmer was held in Toronto at the Ballroom in Gladstone House! There were readings, music, and conversation, and we partnered with Flying Books for book sales.

Pick up your copy of Shimmer here!

ON DECLINE

On Decline cover

Andrew Potter, author of On Decline (October 2021) was interviewed for CBC Ideas with Nahlah Ayed. The episode was published online on June 7, 2022, and was aired on CBC radio the next evening at 8PM ET. You can listen to the full interview here.

Potter tells Ayed,

“I think climate change is an effect of our civilization, but it becomes a problem when you lose the ability to do anything about it.

The argument in the book is that the real nature of our decline is not an event, it’s a process. That is: what have we lost? We’ve lost the ability to fix the problems we face. And I think climate change is the biggest one.”

Grab your copy of On Decline here!

HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Alexandra Oliver, author of Hail, the Invisible Watchman (April 5, 2022), was interviewed by Tabassum Siddiqui for CBC Books! The interview was published online on June 7, 2022.

An excerpt from the interview:

“Sometimes a line comes to you, so you take that line and then you model the poem around that. Sometimes it’s like a block of marble and you go in and chip into it, and you shape it into something completely different. But I think it allows for musicality and pleasure and some kind of intrigue—in the best case, the reader can feel a vibration.”

You can read the full interview here.

Get your copy of Hail the Invisible Watchman here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

On Thursday, June 9, 2022, it was announced by the Atlantic Book Awards that Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021) won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction! You can watch the full ceremony here, with the Alistair MacLeod Prize presented at 1:03:00.

Here’s what the jury had to say:

“In this courageous collection, David Huebert holds little back as he weaves superbly crafted stories of the dark, difficult, and gritty reality of being human. Whether it be the destructive impact we have on our environment, each other, or ourselves, Huebert tackles this challenge with intelligence and compassion, both in his language and style, and in the empathy with which he portrays the human experience. The intertwining of ugliness, beauty, metallic cold and human warmth, and destruction and hope, creates a visceral, hopeful, and rewarding experience for the reader.”

David Huebert, author of Chemical Valley, was interviewed in an author spotlight on the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia website for the Atlantic Book Awards! The spotlight was posted on June 8, 2022.

Huebert told interviewer K.R. Byggdin,

“Oil is the imagistic backdrop of Chemical Valley, but it’s also a book, first and foremost, about struggling people—guilty people, people in crises, hilarious people, people at turning points, sick people, people seeking help. It’s not all doom and gloom, either: there’s joy and love and humour here. I’d like to think everyone can find parts of themself in one or two of these characters.”

You can read the full interview here.

Pick up your copy of Chemical Valley here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY wins the ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS’ ALISTAIR MACLEOD PRIZE!

Chemical Valley coverBiblioasis is thrilled to share that last night, on Thursday, June 9 at 6:30PM EST, it was announced by the Atlantic Book Awards that Chemical Valley by David Huebert won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction!

The prize for the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction is $1000, and celebrates excellent short story collections by writers who are either from the Atlantic Provinces, or live there now.

Here’s what the jury had to say about Chemical Valley:

In this courageous collection, David Huebert holds little back as he weaves superbly crafted stories of the dark, difficult, and gritty reality of being human. Whether it be the destructive impact we have on our environment, each other, or ourselves, Huebert tackles this challenge with intelligence and compassion, both in his language and style, and in the empathy with which he portrays the human experience. The intertwining of ugliness, beauty, metallic cold and human warmth, and destruction and hope, creates a visceral, hopeful, and rewarding experience for the reader.

The other finalists for the Alistair MacLeod Prize were: The Running Trees by Amber McMillan (Goose Lane Editions) and The Love Olympics by Claire Wilkshire (Breakwater Books).

Chemical Valley was also named a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. A huge congratulations from all of us to David!

ABOUT CHEMICAL VALLEY

A Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Finalist • An Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction Finalist • A 2022 ReLit Award Finalist • A Siskiyou Prize Semi-Finalist • Miramichi Reader Best Fiction Title of 2021

Out there by the dock the ocean and the air are just layers of shadow and darkness. But the creature’s flesh hums through the dark—a seep of violet in the weeping night.

From refinery operators to long term care nurses, dishwashers to preppers to hockey enforcers, Chemical Valley’s compassionate and carefully wrought stories cultivate rich emotional worlds in and through the dankness of our bio-chemical animacy. Full-hearted, laced throughout with bruised optimism and sincere appreciation of the profound beauty of our wilted, wheezing world, Chemical Valley doesn’t shy away from urgent modern questions—the distribution of toxicity, environmental racism, the place of technoculture in this ecological spasm—but grounds these anxieties in the vivid and often humorous intricacies of its characters’ lives. Swamp-wrought and heartfelt, these stories run wild with vital energy, tilt and teeter into crazed and delirious loves.

David Huebert – cr. Nicola Davison

ABOUT DAVID HUEBERT

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. David’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The Walrus, Maisonneuve, enRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries, and anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. David teaches literature and creative writing at The University of New Brunswick.

Pick up your copy of Chemical Valley from Biblioasis here!

SHIMMER, THE DAY-BREAKERS, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE: Media Hits!

IN THE NEWS

SHIMMER

Shimmer (May 17, 2022) by Alex Pugsley has been reviewed by the Toronto Star! The review was posted online on May 26, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Robert Wiersema writes,

“Looking at Shimmer as a whole, one is struck by Pugsley’s mastery of the short-story form, his ability to distil entire lives’ worth of meaning into a few short pages. He’s not just a writer to watch: he’s a writer to savour.”

Steven Beattie also reviewed the story ‘Ordinary Love Song’ from the collection on his blog, That Shakespearean Rag. You can read the full review here.

Beattie writes,

“His story proves that the digital mode of communication, while frequently castigated as impersonal and dehumanizing, can, in the right hands, carry with it strong emotional resonance.”

Get your copy of Shimmer here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. The article was published online May 25, 2022 and in print on May 27, 2022. You read the full review here.

Henry Hitchings writes,

“A bookseller for half a century, [Kociejowski] has encountered a great many strange and rare items. … Full of curious information … Kociejowski is eloquent about the magic of books, their bindings and associations.”

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS

Michael Fraser, author of The Day-Breakers (April 5, 2022) was interviewed by Shauna Powers on CBC Saskatchewan Weekend. In the interview he discusses his collection of poems and the CBC Poetry Prize. The episode aired on May 22, 2022, and you can listen to the full interview here.

The Day-Breakers was reviewed by Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on May 28, 2022. You can read the complete review here.

Frederiksen writes,

“Throughout the collection Fraser uses texture and rhythm to unsettling effect. […] line breaks interrupt the flow of accruing details to hold the reader in the moment of bodily vulnerability as long as possible.”

Get your copy of The Day-Breakers here!

 

Spotlight On: PENINSULA SINKING by DAVID HUEBERT

Welcome back to our Biblioasis Spotlight Series! For the month of June, we’re featuring David Huebert‘s vibrant and unflinchingly intimate debut collection of stories, Peninsula Sinking (Oct 24, 2017). Don’t miss a brief note from the author below!

PENINSULA SINKING

Winner of the 2018 Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction • Runner-Up for the 2017 Danuta Gleed Literary Award • Shortlisted for the 2018 Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction

In Peninsula Sinking, David Huebert brings readers an assortment of Maritimers caught between the places they love and the siren call of elsewhere. From submarine officers to prison guards, oil refinery workers to academics, each character in these stories struggles to find some balance of spiritual and emotional grace in the world increasingly on the precipice of ruin. Peninsula Sinking offers up eight urgent and electric meditations on the mysteries of death and life, of grief and love, and never shies away from the joy and horror of our submerging world.

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. David’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The WalrusMaisonneuveenRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries, and anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. David teaches literature and creative writing at The University of New Brunswick.

“A sense of wonderment penetrates the everyday lives of characters from the Maritimes in this well-crafted, compelling collection that displays a mastery of classical short-story structure and technique. Huebert’s vibrant language juxtaposes tough characters with tender preoccupations, creating narratives that are unsettling and mesmerizing, making ordinary moments in relationships thrilling and dangerous.”
—Danuta Gleed Literary Award Jury Statement

 

Photo Credit: Nicola Davison

A NOTE FROM DAVID HUEBERT

Coming Home

When Peninsula Sinking was released, I brought my 3-month-old baby, Rose, on the famous Biblioasis 401 tour, where she attended readings, suckling her mother’s pinkie until it wrinkled and paled and she fell, finally, into stunned sleep. This June Rose turns five, and soon so will Peninsula Sinking, a book that was very much, for me, about my increasingly complex relationship to my home. 

In Peninsula Sinking, I stumbled into ecological writing because it was simply what worked for me. When I wrote about the ocean or an animal—a lonely whale, a stallion sex plane, a beloved dog’s gonadectomy (the euphemism, so appropriately absurd, is “fixed”)—I found that my writing gained a different and new momentum, a lyrical glitter that allowed my prose to rise, raise its hackles, turn around and face me, a strange and sudden creature I scarcely recognized. Eco, the root of ecology and economy comes from the Ancient Greek Oikos, or household. For me, and I think for most, home is very much an environmental concept—home is trees, skies, seas, the particular slump of the mid-morning sun. But I think that home, like the wilderness, is less a place than a psychological state. 

I wrote Peninsula while living in London, Ontario. The stories are mostly set in Nova Scotia, and in some sense I wrote them out of longing for the place where I now sit and write. I live on Chebucto Road, which bears the original name of this place, the Mi’kmaq word Kjipuktuk. Growing up, I never learned that word—a highly tactical obfuscation (I learned plenty about Cartier and Champlain and the Acadian expulsion). From my daughter’s room, I can see the yard of Oxford School, which I attended from primary to grade nine. I regularly walk my daughters past the house I grew up in, just around the corner on Duncan Street. (How strange it is that I can’t go sit in the backyard where I used to pick rhubarb for my mother and let green inch worms swirl through my fingertips). I have come back home, and one might think that I’ve arrived at a resting place. A part of me is deeply soothed by the familiarity of this place I have always loved. In particular, I love the grey, panting days, when it’s not raining but when the air is so salty and dank that an outdoor walk will soak your clothes. I have arrived “back home,” and yet, just as often, I feel ill at ease here. I feel myself a ghost walking through a past life, through the cracked concrete of the school where I wrote my first story (“Big Beard Ben”), where I broke B’s tooth on the wrestling hill and learned about explorers in a transplanted language. 

One layer of my unease, certainly, is an increasing awareness of land theft and genocide and the long, tactical, violent attempt to erase Mi’kmaq culture from this place. But there’s something else too. Something vague and creepy. A malaise. Perhaps it is just a necessary agitation in the feeling of home itself, a longing that refuses to arrive, directed always towards departure or return. I can’t decide, so I suppose I’ll just keep wondering, which is to say wandering, home. 

 

Pick up your copy of Peninsula Sinking here!

Check out David’s latest short story collection, Chemical Valley here!

 

FACTOTUM, SHIMMER, THE MUSIC GAME, POGUEMAHONE, TEMERITY & GALL: New York Times, Toronto Star, and more media hits!

IN THE NEWS!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been featured as part of the “Newly Released” list in the New York Times and reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. Both articles were published on May 20, 2022. You read the full Winnipeg Free Press review here. You can see the complete NYT list here.

Ron Robinson writes, in the Winnipeg Free Press,

“Bibliomaniacs will find much to warm their hearts as author Marius Kociejowski shares his love of books, travel and name-dropping anecdotes of those famous in the arts and in the antiquarian book trade in England.”

Pick up your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

SHIMMER

Shimmer (May 17, 2022) by Alex Pugsley has been reviewed by the Ottawa Review of Books! The review was posted online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Timothy Niedermann writes,

“Pugsley brings out the confusion of life well. No one is in control. Everyone has doubts about themselves and others. His ability to show the twists and turns of our constant, anxious questioning of ourselves makes each story revelatory in a different way. A truly impressive collection!”

Alex Pugsley was also recently interviewed by Open Book! The interview was published online on May 17, 2022. You can check out the full interview here.

Get your copy of Shimmer here!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont, translated by JC Sutcliffe, has been reviewed in ZYZZYVA. The review was posted online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Sophia Carr writes,

“Clermont’s novel reminds us of the resilience of lifelong friendships and how they can triumph over the darker aspects of life. Any time a group of close friends reunites, even after a period marked by trauma, there is the possibility of finding solace by simply reconnecting with those who knew you when you looked at life through a more innocent lens.”

Pick up your copy of The Music Game here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe (May 3, 2022) was reviewed by David Collard in the Times Literary Supplement. The article was published online on May 21, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Collard writes,

Poguemahone is, in content and execution, frequently astonishing, and galloping through a very long novel at the rate of three pages per minute is an exhilarating sensory experience. … In its haunting strangeness and blazing originality, [Poguemahone] deserves far more than a cult following.”

Get your copy of Poguemahone here!

TEMERITY & GALL

Temerity & Gall by John Metcalf (May 24, 2022) has been reviewed by Steven W. Beattie in the Toronto Star. The review was published online on May 24, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Beattie writes,

“[Metcalf’s] exacting eye and his ongoing willingness to call out what he considers substandard, inert, or deadening in our literary culture has earned him opprobrium …
One need not agree with everything [he] says to find much to gnaw on in his analyses of the various ways literary technique and style … are too often downgraded or outright ignored. …
While it’s amusing to wrestle with the temerity and gall of Metcalf’s settled esthetic standards … his achievement in translating this approach into practice as mentor and guiding light is invaluable and we are all in his debt.”

Get your signed limited-edition copy of Temerity & Gall here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS, HAIL THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN, POGUEMAHONE, THE SINGING FOREST, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE: Top Lists and Reviews!

THE DAY-BREAKERS

The Day-Breakers by Michael Fraser (April 5, 2022) has been featured on the spring reading list by CBC Books as one of “50 great books to read this season.” The list was published online on May 11, 2022. You can read the full list here.

The Day-Breakers was also reviewed by Barb Carey in The Toronto Star. The review was published online on April 28, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Carey writes:

“Michael Fraser brings history alive in his third collection, a stirring tribute to the Black soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War, hundreds of whom were African Canadians. […] The language of the poems is terrific: a fresh, striking vernacular (glossary included) that’s both lyrical and gritty in its immediacy”

Get your copy of The Day-Breakers here!

HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Hail, the Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver (April 5, 2022) was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books! The review was published online on May 2, 2022. Read the full review here!

Maryann Corbett writes:

“They’re all here in her newest book, the formal and metrical pleasures that earned critical praise and prizes for Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway and Let the Empire Down […] Hail, the Invisible Watchman is dark and tangled, even when it hooks the heartstrings and pulls.”

Alexandra Oliver was also interviewed by Sheryl MacKay on CBC North by Northwest! The interview was posted on May 1, 2022. You can listen to the interview here beginning at 4:20, with Alexandra reading at 12:30.

Get your copy of Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe (May 3, 2022) was reviewed by Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. The review was published online on May 6, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Sam Sacks writes:

Poguemahone [is] an immense, audacious novel […] a volcanic spray of vernacular, Gaelic-infused memory fragments and character sketches.”

Poguemahone was also reviewed by Ian Mond in the print edition of Locus Mag and featured as part of their list of “New Books: 3 May 2022.” on May 3, 2022. Check it out here!

Ian Mond writes:

Poguemahone is a stunning novel, one of those exceedingly rare books that deserve to be described as a masterpiece.”

Poguemahone was reviewed by Keith Miller in Literary Review (UK). The review, “It Started with a Kiss” was published online on May 4, 2022. You can read the full piece here.

Keith Miller writes:

“I think McCabe is attempting something different from the finely tuned gothic chamber music of his earlier work: he’s aiming for a kind of polyphony. Characters aren’t quite sure who or even how many people they are at any given moment. […] the effect is one of alienation – not that the book isn’t a tremendous pleasure to read, albeit at times slightly uncomfortable. ‘Our national epic has yet to be written,’ all the young literary dudes opine in Ulysses. Poguemahone isn’t ‘about’ Ireland (though it is profoundly ‘about’ the Irish diaspora). But it is a particularly modern kind of epic.”

Patrick McCabe was also featured on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon Podcast on May 3, 2022. Lit Hub featured this podcast episode on May 4, 2022, and Poguemahone was listed on Book Riot as part of: “New Releases and More for May 3, 2022.”

Pick up your copy of Poguemahone here!

THE SINGING FOREST

The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack was recently reviewed in The Miramichi Reader! The article was published online on May 5, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Michael Greenstein writes:

“McCormack revives the secret, hovering between what’s buried and what’s above ground, what sings into a surreal blend. The forest whispers to silence the screams. The children are curious, the reader is curious, and McCormack cares.

“A page-turner with substance, where troubled family trees testify, find new growth, and branch out.”

The Singing Forest was also recently reviewed by the Historical Novel Society. The review was posted online on May 2, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Shauna McIntyre writes:

“Filled with beautiful sentences like “Strands of DNA sliding down an ancestral ladder,” this novel is worth the effort it takes to wade through the stream-of-consciousness sections.”

Order your copy of The Singing Forest here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) has been reviewed by Michael Dirda in The Washington Post. The article, “What bookstores and the literary life contribute to … life” was published online today, May 4, 2022. Check out the full article here.

Dirda writes:

“Kociejowski opens his enthralling memoir, A Factotum in the Book Trade, by observing that bookstores have begun to follow record stores into nonexistence. “With every shop that closes so, too, goes still more of the serendipity that feeds the human spirit.” While there may be “infinitely more choice” in buying from online dealers, “to be spoiled for choice extinguishes desire.” As he says, “I want dirt; I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery. I want to be able to step into a place and have the sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life.”

An accomplished poet and beguiling essayist (try The Pebble Chance), Kociejowski has also enjoyed a long-standing career with various London antiquarian bookshops […] Over the years, Kociejowski came to be friends with poet and translator Christopher Middleton, travel writer Bruce Chatwin, “arguably the greatest prose stylist of his generation,” and the Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who as the reigning monarch of the joke Kingdom of Redonda, appointed him poet laureate in English of that tiny uninhabited island.”

Marius Kociejowski has been featured on the podcast by AbeBooks, Behind the Bookshelves, hosted by Richard Davies. In the episode, they discuss Kociejowski’s A Factotum in the Book Trade (April 26, 2022). The episode was published online on May 18, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

In the episode, Kociejowski says:

“The general secondhand bookshop is rapidly becoming a thing of the past […] Whereas I have always maintained that the soul of the trade is in bookshops. I think something happens in shops. Something magical.”

Get your copy of A Factotum in the Book Trade here!

HOUSEHOLDERS a finalist for the Firecracker Awards!

Householders coverWe’re thrilled to share that Householders by Kate Cayley (September 14, 2021) has been named a finalist for the 2022 Firecracker Award for Fiction! The shortlist was announced on the Firecracker Awards website on May 18, 2022. Check out the full list of finalists here.

The CLMP Firecracker Awards for Independently Published Literature are given annually to celebrate books and magazines that make a significant contribution to our literary culture and the publishers that strive to introduce important voices to readers far and wide. Each winner in the books category will receive $2,000–$1,000 for the press and $1,000 for the author or translator.

The winners will be announced on June 23, 2022, 7PM ET, at the virtual Firecracker Awards Ceremony. RSVP to watch here!

Get your copy of Householders here!

ABOUT HOUSEHOLDERS

A CBC BOOKS AND QUILL & QUIRE ANTICIPATED FALL BOOK • A LAMBDA LITERARY MOST ANTICIPATED LGBTQIA+ TITLE • 49TH SHELF BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021

Linked short stories about families, nascent queers, and self-deluded utopians explore the moral ordinary strangeness in their characters’ overlapping lives.

A woman impersonates a nun online, with unexpected consequences. In a rapidly changing neighborhood, tensions escalate around two events planned for the same day. The barista girlfriend of a tech billionaire survives a zombie apocalypse only to face spending her life with the paranoid super-rich. From a university campus to an underground bunker, a commune in the woods to Toronto and back again, the linked stories in Householders move effortlessly between the commonplace and the fantastic. In deft and exacting narratives about difficult children and thorny friendships, hopeful revolutionaries and self-deluded utopians, nascent queers, sincere frauds, and families of all kinds, Kate Cayley mines the moral hazards inherent in the ways we try to save each other and ourselves.

ABOUT KATE CAYLEY

Kate Cayley has previously written a short story collection, two poetry collections, and a number of plays, both traditional and experimental, which have been produced in Canada and the US. She is a frequent writing collaborator with immersive company Zuppa Theatre. She has won the Trillium Book Award and an O. Henry Prize and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. She lives in Toronto with her wife and their three children.

Audiobooks Promo Special!

Audiobooks are now available from Biblioasis! To celebrate, we’re sending a free audiobook to anyone who buys a print copy of the same title. Offer ends May 31.

Check out these excerpts from our eight new audiobooks (linked below) and start listening today!

MUSIC, LATE AND SOON

A poet rediscovers the artistic passion of her youth—and pays tribute to the teacher she thought she’d lost.

DANTE’S INDIANA

Following Original Prin, a NYTBR Editor’s Choice and Globe and Mail Best Book, Dante’s Indiana is an extraordinary journey through the divine comedies and tragedies of our time.

ON DECLINE

In On Decline, Potter surveys the current problems and likely future of Western civilization (spoiler: it’s not great).

HOUSEHOLDERS

Linked short stories about families, nascent queers, and self-deluded utopians explore the moral ordinary strangeness in their characters’ overlapping lives.

THE MUSIC GAME

An ode to friendship and the ties that bind us together, Stéfanie Clermont’s award-winning The Music Game confronts the violence of the modern world and pays homage to those who work in the hope and faith that it can still be made a better place.

POGUEMAHONE

Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family’s history—and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.

THE AFFIRMATIONS

Moving among the languages of Christian conversion, Classical metamorphosis, seasonal transformation, and gender transition, Luke Hathaway tells the story of the love that rewired his being, asking each of us to experience the transfiguration that can follow upon saying yes—with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, with all one’s strength … and with all one’s body, too.

HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Hail, The Invisible Watchman is haunted poetry—Oliver’s formal schemes are as tidy as a picket-fence and as suggestive; behind the charm of rhyme is a vibrant, dark exploration of domestic and social alienation.

A Biblioasis Interview with Patrick McCabe

A Biblioasis Interview with Patrick McCabe

Tell me a bit about yourself.

Well, I suppose I have been a full-time writer for twenty years now. I used to do other jobs, but they are not of any interest to either me or your public. I suppose I have written a lot about contemporary Ireland, the ancient world, and the interplay between them.

How does the ancient world—folklore, myth—influence your work?

I was brought up on the Catholic Gaelic tradition, you know, which is filled with all sorts of contemplations of alternate worlds and alternative realities and that is always really appealing to a child. In my case, it became comingled with what we call the “culture of the degraded image.” Popular culture like horror movies, comic fiction, TV, all sorts of things. The various manifestations and expressions of the inexplicable in the modern world and the ancient world became one for me. That is very true of Poguemahone. It is ancient folklore and contemporary folklore performing a progressive music dance.

There is also an element of hilarity and self-parody as well. I suppose what I like to do in fiction is to do battle with the English language. There is a sympathetic understanding between the two languages—that is to say Gaelic and the English language—in the book but also a kind of mischievous duet. It has been said that the characters speak in English but feel in Irish. Feel in Gaelic, in the Catholic Gaelic tradition, but speak in the Anglo-Saxon, more pragmatic, straight-talking tradition. There is a lot of that kind of dancing going on. Language dancing around itself, as it were.

It is evident on the page and, well, in moments where characters don’t realize they have slipped into Gaelic. Those moments are very poignant.

Well, it is a serious book and, poignant is what I was looking for. It is ultimately about the greatest horror I’ve ever experienced, which is Alzheimer’s. I haven’t experienced this personally, but I have been very close to it. If in the ancient world people said a spell had been cast either on a person, or a town, it might seem to the rational or contemporary mind to be a ludicrous superstition. But, when you are close to Alzheimer’s, it is as good an explanation as any. Because that is what it looks like.

In the age of TikTok and in the age of the information superhighway, we know everything and we know nothing more than the ancients really. A simple plague can knock everything out. If this had been a bubonic plague, none of these things would have counted for anything. They would have just been toys. It might happen yet.

Yes, it might happen yet. I mean, it is obviously a raucous book. But I found it to be quite serious throughout.

It’s meant to be deadly serious—it is the most serious book I’ve ever written. The overlay of hilarity, self-mockery, and parody is just that: an overlay. The subterranean river running through it is one of dread.

My next question is about your narrator—

I’ve been married for a long time, 40 or 50 years now. I’ve got 2.5 grandchildren, there is one coming in May. I’m sort of a traditional anarchist, as it were. Imaginatively anarchistic, socially traditional. I like order. It is very easy to be anarchic in your imagination if you are ordered in your life. If you are disordered in your life, all hell breaks loose on both fronts. I like steadiness.

When I was reading, I couldn’t help but think of Joyce, Nabokov, especially when thinking about Dan, and the role he plays as the narrator—

As a young man I was very influenced by both of those writers. I suppose who you encounter first leaves a lasting mark. I read all of Nabokov’s work, some of it I liked more than others. I mean I found Ada impenetrable. But the other ones are linguistically very exciting. It is all about language in a way for me in the end. If you get the beat and the rhythm and timbre of a language right, the novel usually emerges through the language, through the cracks between the words. I don’t start off with a story, I never have an idea of where it is going to go. I just follow the language.

This book started off as a traditional, chapter-based book. When I saw what I had, I was in despair, and felt like tearing the whole thing up. I didn’t like it, didn’t think it was original enough, and then a couple of things happened that kind of released the book. It was like an emotional pressure valve that, when released, the book came out. And it came out in an entirely different form than originally anticipated.

And that was very true with this, you know. A lot of it is set in the 70s and to the kind of rhythm of the 70s, like Dylan’s Desolation Row or the poetry of Gregory Corso and William Burroughs. It is at once an homage and a means of acknowledging the rhythms of an age which, for me, release the emotions of an age.

A prospective publisher said to me: “I don’t understand why it is written in this middle of the page kind of poetic style.” I said, “well you know, if it is good enough for Ginsberg, it is good enough for me. If it is good enough for TS Eliot, it is good enough for me. But also, didn’t you know that Irish Leprechauns speak in iambic pentameter?” And he said, “no I didn’t,” and I said, “well they do, and I’ve seen them.” At that point, he terminated the phone call.

Yes, well, I am a reader of poetry first and I think, you know, opening a 600-page book of poetry can be daunting for anyone, at first. But it immediately became viscerally clear why you chose this form.

Yes, well, I completely understand those concerns. If it is difficult to read a 600-page book of poetry, it is equally daunting to write it. I didn’t want to write it unless the story barreled along and was very clear. I am no fan of opaque epics. I love poetry but if something is keeping the reader out, rather than bringing the reader in, particularly now more than in any other age, it is already lost. Because of the proliferation of visceral imagery now, you notice at the theatre or movies, the audience will give [something] ten minutes before glazing over, unless there is something going on that is of interest to them.

So we are in a different time, concentration-wise. I was well-aware of what the challenges would be. But I think once I got the note struck, whoever is going to be interested in this, they are not going to be willfully excluded from anything I have to say.

Yeah, well it is quite stunning, and, in that way, very clear.

That is very important. Nothing maddens me more than a poem that eludes you unnecessarily when you could have been brought into everyone’s advantage, especially the author’s.

When you were thinking about Dan, as the speaker, was it important that he was unstable, unreliable?

If you think about what is happening, it is like a basilisk or a virus (to which we are all accustomed now) has gotten loose. It is the basilisk of vascular dementia, and you don’t know what way that is going to go. You don’t know if what you are being told is the truth, or if it is one time the truth, and next time not the truth. That is the way that affliction works.

It is also an allusion to general apprehensions of reality. The way, say, a Gaelic Catholic sees the world is not the way, say, an Indian Hindu sees the world. Is a tree the same thing to everyone? What is a tree anyway? Who calls it a tree?

These things only become apparent as you get older and you see them collapse. Like the foundation pillars that maybe held a person’s life both intellectually and theologically together crumbling in front of them. What was once very familiar is now terrifying, strange, maybe amusing, but it’s not the thing that was there before. So what is it? So then it’s very important that the narrator had a multistranded view. And the person that he’s representing—or is he representing?—what is her reality now?

It is as big a book as it is because the number of questions it is taking on is quite a lot for me. Normally, the focus is narrower than that. This one, you’ve got two narrators in one, in a way. You’ve got the Spanish/Portuguese element which represents the dreamlike world of the Latin which is very close, I find, to the Catholic Gaelic, one in that rationality moves in and out of itself all of the time. It is colourful. Linguistically it is impish, daring, and challenging in a way that perhaps the Anglo-Saxon Canadian/American anglophile world, shall we say, is not. Not that either is better or worse, they are just different.

You find those differences between Ireland and England. Superficially, they seem the same, until you start listening, and digging a bit, and you see curious gaps. Interesting gaps.

Those are minor explorations though. I suppose really what this story is, is one of exile and heartbreak. You’ve been exiled from yourself, that is the ultimate exile, isn’t it?

That was my next question: exile and the role it plays in your work. I know Fogarty—the last name of your main characters—translates to “exiled” in Gaelic. I’ve read quite a bit of exile literature, rarely from Ireland. A lot of German literature. I know there are many different ways to approach the subject. Exile from the self, the country, what kind of country you are talking about, what the historical conditions of exile are…

I love that tradition of European literature. There is an element there of stark, bony exile feel. But then there is the florid Latin/Gaelic, that is equally trying to lasso the notion of exile but is expressing it in an entirely different way.  But you are still left with the empty room of Kafka in the soul. Had there been anybody there at all? Did you imagine the whole story? Where did the story come from? Fogarty also means outlaw, being on the fringe, on the perimeter of society. But what is society? Is it made up of individuals? Which brings us to Camus. I’ve been interested in L’Étranger—a couple different translations of it.

One translation would open: “Mother died yesterday.” Okay, that is one. Another translation would be: “My mother died yesterday.” Straight away you have two different books, haven’t you? They are both dealing with exile. So, “Mother died yesterday” is the more European, Anglo-Saxon statement of fact. Three words. But then, when you add “my,” it personalizes it, which is the way the Irish mind would approach it. It brings it to the village.

But it doesn’t matter which way you express it, really. The exile is still the same. You are left alone. So, definitely, there is an element of The Waste Land. Who knows anyone? Who knows oneself?

These are such heavy questions. I couldn’t have written them except for in the style in which they emerged, a rainbow river that tumbles and torrents along. It had to come out for me that way, all these other things were buried deep. The form helped them to be released.

Do you think the condition of their being in exile helped you work out other themes that exile compounds? Like madness, alienation, isolation?

If you look at any of my humble offerings. There is always an element of someone being at the center of things, but they’re not. And they know they’re not. In The Butcher Boy, there is the illusion of being happy-go-lucky, but in fact the soul is desolate. You will often find, particularly if you examine Irish history, expressions that there is some terrible loss. Maybe even just in the biblical sense, as simple as banishment from the Garden of Eden. A sense of what is missing. People search for it in good work, love, God. It often eludes them.

It seems to me, having come through a God-centered world and now, in its absence, that the exile may be far deeper than we have begun to realize.

The world as it reconfigures itself and moves at such a speed, there are sometimes in the secular world when people seem to me to speak with enormous authority without any great information. Unbelievable confidence, but when you start to pick at this technological delivery, it doesn’t do a great deal. That’s not to say that I am particularly religious, but I grew up in a world where the psalms were known to very ordinary people, they could quote things, even if they weren’t particularly well-schooled or educated, they had a relationship—however oblique—with the classical world which is now laughable…

Obliterated.

Completely obliterated, annihilated, and in fact scorned. You see politicians who are attempting to impress but are so fool-hearty and ham-fisted in their delivery that it is nothing but an embarrassment. We may come out of this, I don’t know. But I think there is some time left for it to run, before something happens, and the game is up. It certainly does embarrass me. Do you know what I mean by that?

Yes. The denigration of language that was once universal for a community. Exile as a universal, philosophical, or existential condition, yeah…

Ultimately, it doesn’t make any difference if you were here or not.

Yeah, and now you might not have the language to express or even approach expressing those feelings.

Well, that is really worth exploring. Why, it is really good to have a dialogue with younger people because when you get to your mid-20s, these things might start to be of some interest. Because the thin ice that they’re fed, it only lasts through the teens. When real emotions start to come in, the language that has been attacked and obliterated could be of service to them. You can see the difference between people who have now realized that and people that haven’t.

The ones who haven’t would be really fine writers, maybe, and competent. It’s not their fault that they have been tumbled into an age where these things have been derided, particularly in America now. It wouldn’t be the first time. It just seems to have happened at a furious speed to me. But the 50s and the 70s didn’t differ in that respect, so much.

Kind of a shift but, not really. I would love to hear you talk about the role music plays in the text.

The beat of the book is set by the appearance of one particular song, which is an old Irish, Scottish folk song called “The Killiburn Brae.” A brae is a slope or a hill. It is generally sung to the beat of a hand drum. Like a lot of work songs, it is about the war between men and women. A man speaks about sending his wife down to hell. She is so infuriating that the Devil brings her back and dumps her at the doorway of her husband’s house, saying “you can look after her, because I can’t handle her.” The lyrics of this song are not that significant, but what is significant is the rhythm. It is the first song you encounter and is the musical foundation of the book.

As it moves into different areas, you could encounter the cool crooners of the 1950s, it could be Nat King Cole, or scat beats of the 60s. When it goes into the 70s, it moves into the psychedelic, transcendental phase. You have that absorbing period between 1970 and 1974 when all sorts of outlandish experimentations were taking place. In a way, the book is an homage to that as well, insofar as it is a drug-fueled opera. This sort of thing that was very common at that time. It was possible for record companies to form some of the most outlandish projects imaginable before they ran out of road, and punk came in.

But the circular librettos of the 70s certainly inform the book, as does William Burroughs and George Corso and all those … well I don’t like the word experimental, they are all part of the canon now. They might have been seen as experimental against Tennyson but not now. Just look at Bob Dylan, the most experimental of them all has won a Nobel Prize and is regarded along with Shakespeare. Quite rightfully so, I think.

Dylan told someone that in 1972 that he was a sea-faring mariner off the coast of Barbados. It was all a pack of lies, wasn’t it Bob, and it would have turned out to have actually happened to someone like Dave van Ronk. Dylan would’ve stolen the story and convinced himself that he was there. And if he convinced himself, well, maybe he was there.

It is operating on that level. I have always been interested in that multi-layered aspect of Dylan’s imagination. He rang his mother up one time, and he said to her, “I hope you don’t mind me making up all these stories.” She had read somewhere another pack of lies about when he ran away with the carnival. She said “Oh, absolutely no dear, but why are you doing it?” and he said “oh, well, I think it helps my career” and chuckles. And, you know, I like to chuckle.

It helps with the condition of exile. There isn’t that much of Dylan in the book, just a little bit. Because he is too powerful. If you admitted him in, he could take over, then it’s no book of your own, he would scoop the prize again, like he did to Dave van Ronk.

I found it very operatic, in the way that The Wall and Quadrophenia, are.

Those albums, at their best, well, I love their absolute audacity. They really shouldn’t have the nerve to do those things. I thought that with the original 1500-page manuscript of this book, it was quite tame. Little strokes trying to burst, little veins. Then, when I got them all together, it came out in a torrent. But it was a controlled torrent. The original manuscript was solid and not as imaginative. But it provided the foundation. Like what I was saying: you live a relatively straight life so you can let your imagination go where it wants. If you are living a too dangerous life, and your imagination is going where it wants, you may well end up in trouble. And there is plenty of evidence, with the history of writers, to suggest that. It just doesn’t really work. It can be really dangerous. Anyway.

Well, you have addressed this already, in so many ways, but one of my questions is about the departure from prose. Especially as it pertains to dementia and expressing fractured consciousness. Maybe there is more you want to say on that.

I have approached it before, in other books, but I’ve never quite gone full throttle ‘til the end. It has been part of chapters here or there. I suppose, I’ve never been this close to fractured consciousness. At various times in my life, I’ve been semi-fractured myself in my perception or I have been associated with people, specifically in those countercultural days, who willfully courted distorted perception. Jim Morrison would be a great hero of ours. All these people who made it very attractive, especially to the young.

But when you are older, my age, and you are close to fractured consciousness to the extent that it terrifies you and terrifies you. You can only do it justice by writing a book like this, which addresses it head on. It is not funny. It is not a cultural fad. It is a nightmare.

Well, those are all my larger, thematic questions. My final question is what you are reading now?

I’m reading a book called Dead Fashion Girl by Fred Vermorel. It is set in the demi-monde of London’s Soho, late 1950s. I don’t know why I am reading it. There is a nexus of writing of people like Eoin McNamee and David Peace and a number of other English writers, that seem to circle the same world, a blue-lit, tremulous world of secrets and illicit comingling of the upper and lower classes in Britain. But it also affects Northern Ireland. There is a strange, fetishistic nocturnal world there. Post-war Britain, just before the 60s break, that is very, very interesting. I don’t know why, but it is. I don’t know if these writers communicate. There is something going on there.

 

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