Tyee Summer Reads list includes Malarky
A dapper mention in The Tyee for Malarky chosen as one of their Summer Reads picks in a fine radical list of books. What a nifty write-up.
A book to read while spending that week at the cottage with your relatives you always thought were a bit, um, off.
Malarky by Anakana Schofield (bibilioasis)
Vancouver author Schofield’s much lauded debut novel employs a bluntly pragmatic first person voice in explicating the gradual psychic unraveling of an Irish middle-aged woman. The language is funny one moment, forensic the next, but just when the book begins to feel a small gem of internal monologue, you realize its about everyone in the world who is driven a little or a lot crazy by their culture’s repressive notions of sexuality, identity and proper behaviour. In other words, read Malarky to either understand how your cottage-sharing relatives got that way, or to see them as not being as screwed up as you thought they were.
Click here to read all the selections (including some good local picks like Davie Street Translations by Daniel Zomparelli)
Murmuration
I’m pleased to report I’ve received complaints about the weather in four cities this week! Of course complaints are a good thing since that means people are attending to the weather and examining it, which is to be encouraged…
The talk in other parts of the province here is flood warnings and rivers rising. Closer to home it’s really been exceptionally shite, drowned onion weather. But today on the radio they were saying it is normal for it to be cold in June so what do we know? Apparently nothing.
What I do know is I caved in and turned the heating on again today, how and ever when I went for the switch it was already on. Unbeknownst. I must have turned it back on weeks ago in despair.
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This evening I was at a Vancouver Writers Festival event, where the line up for this year’s festival was unveiled. I am delighted to be appearing at the festival with Malarky this year. I’m equally delighted to have been invited to a number of other festivals from Winnipeg to IFOA (Harbourfront) to Brooklyn and beyond. Thank you to them all for supporting Malarky.
It was very heartening to meet three people tonight who recalled Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! And one man who told me he’d even been at the VPL event I organized for Taxi! a few years ago. Even more exciting was the news this week that Taxi! is now going to be taught by one ace history Professor at SFU. I think if I remember rightly we met the particular professor during the performance art intervention Lori W and I did at Not Sent Letters. I love these ripples and how they roll out from one moment and create a new one. Fantastic! Glory be for the brave readers who pick up a book and engage!
Flare Magazine select Malarky as one of their 5 Summer Hot Picks
Thank you so much to Flare Magazine who selected Malarky as one of their 5 Summer Hot Picks.
You’ll note they selected it alongside 50 Shades of Six Million Copies. I am fairly confident that my dubious sex in Malarky is far more satisfying for women readers and I welcome all 6 Million of them to read Malarky as soon as possible and then dispute this assertion in the comments section below. I shall happily atone once the millions report back.
On the road with Malarky: Malarky roadie
I have been away on the road with Malarky, so apologies for the interrupted weather forecasts and meanderings. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to Bolen Books in Victoria, Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle and Village Books in Bellingham.
The highlight for me was at the Seattle launch when 10-yr-old Willie Bays, on his flute, played traditional Irish music (trad) with his mother Susan on fiddle. A mighty player and together they played a mighty set. Go raibh mile to them both.
Also, am enormously grateful for the enthusiasm and warmth of booksellers Robert, Casey and Claire (in store order respectively). Most impressed with the woodwork in many of these shops and the array of jigsaw puzzles that surrounded the reading area at Bolen Books. (including one of a teapot)
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What about the weather event at Union Station in Toronto yesterday? A bathtub rainfall event! We were grim on this coast around the same time, but I had to shift my overcast sulking when I saw what had been dealt to the floor at Union. A spot I stood but two weeks ago and imagined doing a cozy waltz around (if I could manage such a thing).
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In gardening news I am a disgrace. Officially flagged a green one. Some mysterious objecter has plunged a bamboo pole into my plot with green masking tape on it to alert … I am not sure whom. Not the Mason Bees who were happily mining in my strawberry patch today. Thank you to the gardeners who offered help for my beleagured plot and added soil to it in my absence.
The Flowerman has the most magnificent Pink Poppies. They have to be capitalized they are such stunners. He also generously added some manure to my plot and consequently the purple geranium has gone nuclear in size and I think has made for happy bees.
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Profuse thanks to all who have read/are reading Malarky and have tweeted or written about it. Lovely to hear of this happening. A book is nothing without readers. I have great faith in readers and it grows deeper by the day.