June 16, 2012
Malarky: “reminiscent of Under Milk Wood”
Thank you to JC Sutcliffe at Slightly Bookist for taking precious time to engage with and excavate Malarky.
In her review she remarks:
Click the above to read the entire piece.
June 16, 2012
Under the weather
Oh glory, oh grief how we are challenged by our current weather! It is so ridiculously dark outside today and grim that I must insist to myself there’s something unbeknownst to discover from it. It’s like a set of bricks on the eyelids from indoors, just misery inducing.
To wit, in the spirit of Our Woman, I shall not be sunk and shall up and out into it rather than remain surly in retreat.
I have daily reports of similar weather elsewhere. I was only remarking yesterday to a correspondent on the incredible power of the weather to do our heads in. I maintain tho’ it needs to be embraced, even tho’ I am not a great example of such today.
June 10, 2012
Montreal Gazette review Malarky: “one of the most vivid fictional creations to come along in years…”
Montreal was very good to Malarky this week. More pan clanging! Thank you to the Montreal Gazette and Ian McGillis, who had plenty thoughtful warm remarking and framing on Malarky. Some snips below:
“..she’s one of the most vivid fictional creations to come along in years, and a new literary standard bearer for the most under-represented of demographics: the working class middle-aged woman.”
“Toeing the delicate line between tragedy and comedy – the former inherent in the bare facts of Our Woman’s life, the latter in her irrepressible voice – Schofield starts at a pitch of inspiration most novels are lucky to reach at any point and remarkably sustains that level all the way through. The spirit of Joyce’s Molly Bloom hovers around the edges of Malarky, so if you’ve always found the last pages of Ulysses to be the highlight of that difficult masterpiece, you might just find Molly’s modern-day descendant in Our Woman. Others will be reminded of another Irish classic, lately fallen into unjust neglect: Edna O’Brien’s 1960 novel The Country Girls. But here’s one Irish country girl who has grown up and seen and done things O’Brien’s could never have envisioned.”
June 10, 2012
Rain and quakes
Wales appears to be under serious flooding, I heard reports of heavy rainfall from the West of Ireland and here in BC we have a mixture of 6 current flood watches and warnings in effect. Rain is the theme!
Today however we enjoyed a blast of sunshine. At 6.30pm I had to dodge indoors for fear I might even get burnt. (It doesn’t take much, I can manage to get sunburned indoors with the curtains shut)
Oh the other enormous piece of news that I managed to shamefully miss for two days because of being in a deadline tunnel was an earthquake (4.0) off the coast of Co. Mayo! Felt in Mayo, Sligo, Galway which has the geologists pondering and some of us pointing at the fracking activity for inquiry.
June 8, 2012
The Rover/Rover Arts review Malarky
I clang pans very loudly in appreciation for the careful reading of Malarky and lovely review by Elise Moser in The Rover (An Independent review of art and culture) out of Montreal.
Here’s an extract:
This is a brilliant book. Finely drawn, deceptively muscular, and pulsing with warm intelligence and wit, it offers a reprieve from despair no less profound for coming very much at the last moment.
Malarky is studded with fabulous sentences. Page after page, the reader is thrilled by vivid turns of phrase like whiffs of ammonia that tunnel up into the brain with a pungent combination of discomfort and unexpected pleasure. Anakana Schofield’s language carries the sharpness of Irish speech; she uses it to reveal the incisive powers of observation with which our heroine carves her perceptions of the ordinary life around her, and excavates the truths – emotional and practical — that the world tries to keep buried.
Read the entire review here.
June 8, 2012
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)
June 8, 2012
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!
June 5, 2012
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.
June 3, 2012
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.
