From Saturday’s Irish Times
The sun shone in Dublin and Vancouver on Saturday weather-wise my sources confirm. I was actually in Victoria this weekend attending the BC Book Prize Gala. (Report coming) Here is a screen grab from Saturday’s Irish Times.
Merci Montreal
Some very generous words for Malarky in Saturday’s Montreal Gazette from Ian McGillis. Molto Merci Montreal for this warm sentiment. I hope some day to descend upon your transit system and do a reading with your people. So invite me! This is not a busking suggestion! Writers can’t busk — what’s up with that? Perhaps they can.
“Glasses were raised among fiction lovers nationwide last week when Anakana Schofield’s sui generis debut Malarky was named winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. All temptation to say “I told you so” based on a rave review last summer and a year-end 10-best selection in a certain Montreal newspaper will be firmly resisted. The choice represents a triumph for both adventurous writing —Malarky’s Our Woman is about as unlike a standard Canadian fiction heroine as you could get—and for small literary publishers: Biblioasis has established itself with remarkable speed as a house of unerringly high standards. Congratulations all around.”
Here’s the link to the entire column including an uplifting tale about the gift of 9,115 books and an opportunity to discover what wrtier Elise Moser has been reading.
Amazon.ca First Novel Award citation and Malarky on Canada AM
Here is the citation for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award which I won on Wednesday for Malarky.
“Malarky is a bold first novel from an author whose prose hums with electric wit and linguistic daring,” Stuart Woods, editor of Quill & Quire and head judge for the 37th First Novel Award said in a statement. “The novel traverses darkly comic territory with intelligence and poise, relating the story of an unnamed narrator whose resilience in the face of life’s disappointments will stay with readers long after the verbal pyrotechnics have dissipated. Anakana Schofield is a true original, and her novel is a delight.”
And here is the link to my very pink looking appearance on CTV’s CANADA AM programme.
Malarky nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize!
Book prizes and book prize culture are problematic, I have always acknowledged this and been critical of the truncated effect they can have on our reading rather than recognizing literature exists on a continuum and our ambition should be to read out and read between and beside different works and texts. And to create more challenging works.
How and ever, I was thrilled to see Malarky nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize today firstly because of the books and writers she sits beside: Anne Fleming, Bill Gaston, Yasuko Thanh and my fellow Biblioasis author CP Boyko and secondly because it’s a regional prize that acknowledges a local literature exists. And thirdly, for the completely obscure reason that it reminded me of Ethel Wilson’s description of Marine Drive and the houses being built there and made me ponder how would she contemplate the subsequent condification that’s happening today. And fourthly, for the inadvertent discovery reading all the nominations that Dan Francis has written a book on the History of Trucking in BC that had until today completely passed me by and now I’m intrigued to discover it.
Here is the National Post story on the BC Book Prize nominations: click on the headline and follow the link in the story to the full listings including aforementioned trucking book.
Schofield, Gaston highlight B.C. Book Prize nominees
Anakana Schofield, Bill Gaston and George Bowering are among the authors shortlisted for the 2013 B.C. Book Prizes, it was announced Thursday.
The nominees for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, for the best work of fiction, are: C.P. Boyko for Psychology and Other Stories (Biblioasis), Anne Fleming for Gay Dwarves of America (Pedlar Press), Bill Gaston for The World (Hamish Hamilton Canada, Penguin Group Canada), Anakana Schofield for Malarky (Biblioasis) and Yasuko Thanh for Floating Like the Dead (McClelland & Stewart Ltd.)
Henceforth, I think I shall document all book prize related talk according to the snacks served and the likelihood of inclement weather on the day they are handed out. Also, I shall look for that Marine Drive paragraph I mention in Swamp Angel. I am certain that’s the title that contains it.
*
We shall now return to the Pineapple Express and car review forums. This last and third day of the Pineapple Express showed according to the video I watched, that the system is coming from a South West subtropical to the right of Hawaii on the map. (That a long way for this volume of rain! Respect!) It shifted to the right on the map. Our figures for rainfall were not too astonishing, but for North & West Vancouver eek. I commend the mud on not giving way.
Two earthquake events up the coast in Masset, Haida Gwaii: 4.6 & 4.2 today to be noted attentively.
Woo-hoo! Malarky nominated for Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Hot off boiling the kettle here …Malarky has been nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. This just in from the Toronto Star report
“Amazon.ca announced the finalists for the 37th Annual First Novel Award Wednesday. This Canadian literary award recognizes the outstanding talent of Canadian novelists who have published their first novel in 2012.”
Click here to learn about all 5 titles nominated including the intriguing People Park by Pasha Malla.
Click here to read the offical news release put out by Amazon at the rising of the sun.
From a Malarky reader yesterday
I have been meaning to share some of the messages i receive from readers: the image of people discussing anything for hours is always boldly up lifting. This was most cheering to read. Thank you dear reader(s)
“My book club finally got around to reading Malarky and I must say we all loved it – what a wild ride! We talked about it for hours which doesn’t often happen when we get together – we forwent our usual gossip session to talk about your wonderful book. Our Woman was a delightful character and we all loved your dialogue and gift with language. Rarely has a book made me laugh so hard and feel so heartsick at the same time. Two of the group read it twice and recommended we all do the same. We can’t wait for the next one.”
Hot! Hot! Hot! Crew, shoe and Malarky
Possibly by far the hottest place to cover Malarky is Crew Magazine. Crew is a gay magazine for everyone. Sometimes their chesty males flash up in my Facebook feed, along with very fine furniture and the current homepage features some rather ravishing shoes.
I just learned of a piece they generously wrote about Malarky in November of all months. When we were all feeling especially chesty because of that grim weather.
Thank you to Bruce Michael for placing Our Woman right where she belongs between the specimans and the furniture.
Read the piece by clicking the quote here (not entirely sure where I was heading with the chillies…): “Thinking back, she’s eroticizing what she witnesses in a way,” Schofield adds. “It awakens something within her. It’s a bit like foreign food. You either don’t like it or you stuff your mouth with hot chilies or whatever.”
Or click here to see the ravishing shoe if you prefer.
You can hunt for the chesties on your steam.
Salty Ink Dazzling Debuts includes Malarky
On December 20, Salty Ink, a Newfoundland based literary blog, announced its list of Most Dazzling Debuts 2012 and Malarky was among them.
On January 20, 2013, the same Salty Ink posted it’s (Probably) The Best Novels of 2012 list and Malarky was included again.
Thank you to Salty Ink for this double listing and for bringing Malarky to the attention of readers in Atlantic Canada.
Although I remain slightly underwhelmed by the much lauded by my Atlantic Canadian friends “King Cole tea” — I would very much love to read in Atlantic Canada, as I am most keen to visit the other side of Canada and discover lobster. I am quite an expert in the weather forecasts for those regions. They have some serious storm action going on in them there parts!
Newfoundland yahoy!
Malarky on Montreal Gazette’s Top Shelf
“Anakana Schofield’s Malarky (Biblioasis, 225 pages, $19.95) introduced an indelible heroine into our national literature, no less so for the fact that she’s Irish. Inhabiting the sometimes confused but always indomitable mind of the grieving and randy Dublin housewife Our Woman, Schofield has created a note-perfect literary joyride, a “voice novel” in the best sense. An unaccountable collective oversight saw Malarky left off all the major prize short lists, but Amazon and other Internet indicators show that Irish-Canadian Schofield is finding readers regardless, and that’s as heartening a story as 2012 has provided.”
Thank you to Ian McGillis of the Montreal Gazette for including Malarky in his year of reading list. I am delighted that my novel is included in our national literature here. I hope she’ll be taught as Canadian Literature and World Literature and Irish Literature. I owe a great deal to this country and Vancouver, the community where I live and its many kind people who have encouraged and inspired me, especially during difficult times. Malarky was Made In Canada. I hope to contribute more to our literature, as I am keen to write into, out of and in response to the where I live. On va voir!
Toronto Star The Best Reading of 2012 includes Malarky
Malarky by Anakana Schofield (Biblioasis, $19.95, 222 pages)
Unaccountably overlooked by this year’s prize juries, Anakana Schofield’s ribald story of an Irish farmwife’s descent into late-life cougardom and mental breakdown is a standout debut and one of the best Canadian novels of the year: the sort of book that forces you to read it over again as soon as you finish. AG
Thank you Alex Good and The Toronto Star for such a spirited inclusion and description of Malarky.
Delighted to sit beside intriguing works like A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava, Rawi Hage’s Carnival and my ole favourite buoyant Leanne Shapton! Not to mention a sister Biblioasis author Alice Petersen (All the Voices Cry).
Malarky selected as Chatelaine: Top Five Books Picks of 2012
There’s something rather post-Blanchot about this one I quite enjoyed. Blanchot maintained (correct me if I am wrong) that the writers intention should not be considered, nor the readers response, but the text alone. Hence this one leans toward a pre-digestion of the text! The conjuring of an appetite. Thanks to Laurie Grassi for this nod. I am glad to know thinking women on Twitter are thinking about Our Woman.
“Everybody’s come up with a list of their fave books of 2012, but I thought I’d try something a little different: My picks of my top unread books of 2012.”
Click here to discover the other 4 books along with Malarky, (including Rebecca Lee’s Bobcat and Other Stories.)
Malarky chosen by Apple iTunes, iBookstore BEST OF 2012 Fiction
Thanks a million to the (Apple) iBookstore who selected Malarky as one of their 10 BEST OF 2012 FICTION titles.
iBookstore described its chosen 10 titles as “spectacular books” which sent rather a bounce of reverb between my kettle and toaster!
Among the 10 titles selected were writers I personally admire such as the brave Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead (I read with Tamara at Incite at VPL which was delightful), Junot Diaz’s This is How You Lose Her. (I was actually due to read with Junot in Toronto but there was a double booking with another festival, hopefully we’ll have another chance to read together in this lifetime) and Ben Stephenson (who if I am not mistaken contributed flash fiction to the same Boulderpavement issue I did in May, along with Stuart Ross.)
I also thank and commend the iBookstore Canada for their strong support of Canadian Independent Publishers. I am a fan of ibooks as an interface and enjoy swiping my way through novels.
Edmonton Journal: Malarky selected for Five Favourite Reads of 2012
How lovely indeed to see Malarky selected as one of Five Favourite Reads of 2012 by the Edmonton Journal Book Columnist Michael Hingston alongside Cesar Aira’s Varamo / The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (New Directions) and Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies.
I recently alighted on Aira’s work and have delighted in him. I appeared on a panel with Leanne Shapton at IFOA and admire the interdisciplinary approach in her work. Swimming Studies took me back to the swimming pool. Sadly disasters abounded upon my return so I shall stick to vicarious swimming through reading that memoir and keep my feet dry until I can afford some serious swimming instruction. (Again! I must have taken the most swimming lessons in history and made so little progress I’d have to wonder if there’s in a swimming gene I lack). I also really hope that 2013 or even 2014 will result in a reading in Edmonton. Never has a writer been keener than I to visit the home of the former Toonerville Trolley. (Not even sure many writers even know of the one time existence of this historical transport system) I have studied the weather in Edmonton and now own a parka for this impending visit.
Here’s some snips from the article (full piece click here)
2. Anakana Schofield, Malarky (Biblioasis) “an obsessive, voice-driven novel about a grieving Irish housewife that runs along irregular timelines and lingers at unusual places. It also never, ever apologizes for itself. More importantly, it all works….”
3. Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press)
“Midway through this gorgeous, buoyant hybrid of a memoir, Shapton inserts a 26-part photo series documenting, with captions, every swimsuit she owns…”
5. César Aira, Varamo / The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (New Directions)
“…Aira’s fiction is an ongoing, off-the-cuff record of his magpie imagination…Read Aira in the morning and you won’t need coffee.”
Georgia Straight: Malarky selected as a best book of 2012
This week’s Georgia Straight contained some pretty wild and cheery news.
In the Georgia Straight Best Books of 2012 round up an extraordinary occurrence (by my standards anyway) three different critics chose Malarky as one of their picks in the same article!
Thank you to Brian Lynch, Michael Hingston and Alexander Varty for the thoughtful reflections on Malarky. Much appreciated.
Was also glad to be beside Karolina Waclawiak‘s novel How to Get Into the Twin Palms published by the dynamic Two Dollar Radio and Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, which has to be a serious contribution to what Lidia Yuknavitch (another swimmer: see her Chronology of Water) termed “a literature of the body” during our panel discussion at Wordstock — The Portland Writers Festival.
Here are the three extracts:
Malarky
(By Anakana Schofield. Biblioasis)
In her debut novel, the Vancouver-based writer rolls out a fully realized marvel of a character, one who seems like she’s been there all along, waiting to be written into story form. Our Woman, as she’s named here, belongs to the settled ways of the Irish countryside—until her world is capsized by the hidden sexual lives of her husband and her son. Schofield has fashioned a truly memorable figure, clear as day from the opening pages of this raw, sad, funny book, and yet consistently surprising. (Brian Lynch)
Malarky
(By Anakana Schofield. Biblioasis)
Great fiction takes risks. That’s why descriptions of a classic and an utter fiasco can sound so similar. And yes, in theory, the debut novel by Vancouver’s Anakana Schofield is far from a sure thing: it’s an obsessive, voice-driven novel about a grieving Irish housewife that runs along irregular timelines and lingers at unusual places. It also never, ever apologizes for itself. More importantly, it all works. Joe Biden may have done more to repopularize the word malarky this year, but Schofield’s electrifying novel will leave a much longer impression. (Michael Hingston)
Malarky
(By Anakana Schofield. Biblioasis)
I laughed, I cried, and I’m not kidding. The immensely gifted Anakana Schofield’s vivid study of a middle-aged Irish housewife’s nervous breakdown has a huge heart and a fierce brain; Malarky is, by a wide margin, the most memorable fiction I’ve read this year. Our Woman invents some dubious remedies for her diabetes, not to mention her sense of shame and loss over her husband’s philandering and subsequent death; nine out of 10 doctors would not prescribe fruitcake and sex with strangers. But sometimes cures can take curious form, in life as in this extremely delicious novel. (Alexander Varty)
Warmth
Dear friends,
Here is a blast of warming for you all during these darker winter days. Today we have a wind warning for overnight, but the world is quite still and almost a tad pulpy looking out there. Wherever you are I hope you enjoy this collaboration. I especially appreciated the hilly twinkles in the piece Pendulum. On an off beat note, I did wonder how the Mr Fain fiddler manages to play all those notes in such a restrictive jacket and how he doesn’t overheat. I wrote many parts of my novel Malarky listening to Metamorphosis 4 on repeat. I wonder if you can hear it under the prose.
I send you all my best Winter warmth and gratitude for your warm support throughout the year for Malarky. AK.
Malarky tour 2012 and major weather events
I have been on the road with Malarky on and off since Sept. 23 when I began at the Brooklyn Book Festival followed by Ontario (Trent, Peterborough), THIN AIR Winnipeg International Writers Festival, Victoria Writers Festival, Wordstock Portland Writers Festival, Vancouver Writers Fest and I am just returned from the marvellous experience that is IFOA in Toronto.
Thank you to all those festivals who invited me, to the audiences and many readers I met, writers I read with and the staff and volunteers who work so hard at these festivals and my publisher Biblioasis for their stellar efforts on behalf of Malarky. I also thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Writers Union and the BC Arts Council for support.
Obviously I have been greviously remiss with my weather reports and must take a big inhale and apologize for this. It is not that I haven’t been observing for I have, just have not quite managed to nail it onto the screen.
Yesterday’s weather events in New Jersey and New York give great pause. The ferocity. The build and how the weather pattern increased its speed on approach, thus making the predication even more challenging. One of the descriptions that has stayed with me from relatives in the middle of it was of the windows bending. The windows being bent (inwards I assume) from the power of the wind. And how fire and water co-existed throughout. Houses on fire in the Rockaways that were surrounded by water on all sides was another description I caught.
I send good thoughts and courage to those involved in recovery efforts and getting the lights turned back on. I am always impressed by the spirit of New Yorkers and was doubly impressed by noting friends who woke this morning there and immediately turned their thoughts and attention to how they might join volunteer efforts today in that city.
Over the next weeks I will catch up on some postings and thoughts about my experience on the road.
Stay warm and safe and thank you again.
Joe Biden endorses Malarky!
Tonight in the Vice Presidential debate we heard Joe Biden indicate the influence of my novel Malarky on him.
Behind every Vice-President is an episodic novel.
Buy the novel that inspired American politics ….
Newsday note Malarky reading event in NY as a “must see”
Thanks to Wendy Smith and Newsday who cited my event with Amy Sohn and Joshua Henkin at the Brooklyn Book Festival in their list of 5 Must Sees at the 7th Annual Event in this recent article
That made for a lovely, warm welcome to Brooklyn last weekend. Photos and full report of extraordinary festival to follow shortly. Certainly a highlight of my year! Such admiration for Johnny Temple and the team of staff and volunteers who pull off this amazing festival. I wish every city could enjoy such a celebration of literature.
The book that ruined my life: Anakana Schofield
The Georgia Straight recently asked me the following question in relation to my appearence on Sunday Sept 29th at The Word on the Street 2012 : Which book changed your life?
Below was my response, published on their website and now here.
Since March 15, when I published a novel, I have been asked multiple times in interviews: which book changed your life?
If honest, I have not had a Pentecostal-change-of-my-life moment as a result of reading any book.
Ever.
The things that changed my life were my father dying one night in 1977, my son being born in 1999, getting a council flat or its equivalent in Vancouver, and a diagnosis of reflux in my left kidney.
It occurs to me that I have not considered the original question in broad enough terms. Which book has ruined my life?
BBC Radio 4 provides the answer. Last Thursday, not long after the above inquiry yet again ding-donged into my email (“Tell us about the book or author that changed your life”), I came upon a serialization of Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male, Episode 5 of which was streaming live.
Rogue Male was a novel I studied and the only novel I have any memory of studying (do I need to check into a clinic?) for O-level English 25 years ago. It was a profound experience. We had to read it aloud. I was never ever asked to read aloud because I desperately wanted to read aloud. I had to suffer the most awful rendition of this novel aloud, which I duly tackled by reading the entire novel ahead silently. Chapters ahead, I’d read the whole book at my desk, while everyone else was still plodding through early chapters aloud. It was a racehorse reading of Rogue Male.
Mr. Household’s novel was a visceral experience. I read a novel about a man who lived under the ground like a mole. Just because. It didn’t matter why he lived under there. I was only captivated by the idea that people could live underground and therefore, obviously, did live underground. Right now. All around me. And because there was an authoritative male voice telling me. I too could go there.
With hindsight, perhaps the central heating wasn’t very good in our house because I can’t understand why I wanted, in the words of the Jam, to be Going Underground. I was an overly imaginative adolescent likely damaged by enforced listening to BBC Radio 2.
In anticipation of going back underground with Radio 4 last week, I searched up the novel online and felt a retroactive kick to the kidney to learn the book was a spy thriller! A classic spy thriller! Episode 5 delivered itself along with a sentence describing a man holding sight of another man in a crossfire.
There was no man killing any other man in the novel I read at that school desk. There was no spy on the run. There was just a man who wanted to live underground for a reason that made no impression on me, because I was too impressed by the concept you could live down there. Beneath Clarks Shoes. I was impaled on that image. Household could say whatever he wanted after that. I was gone. Underground.
Twenty-five years after the fact I learn that my most visceral literary influence may explain why I have never been able to imagine owning a home and flunked science.