Vancouver Sun reviews Malarky

Two very positive reviews for Malarky on this raining good reviews Friday:

The first in tomorrow’s Vancouver Sun (complete with garages and mad Dr Who woman-in-pipe pictures)

Malarky does a great job revealing emotional distress in straightforward (and graphic) language while using shifting time frames and narrators to develop the enormous complexity of grief, memory and mental collapse.  The novel is a challenging read, but for all the right reasons.

(Click on text above to read entire review)

Nifty plugs for Malarky II: Modern Tonic choose Malarky as May Book Pick

I was particularly delighted to learn this week that my novel Malarky has been selected as a May Book Pick by Modern Tonic (Gay approved pop culture gems before they’ve been co-opted by everyone else)

Here’s what Modern Tonic had to say about Malarky

“We’re all for quirky, character-driven novels, and this insightful and sharply funny book delivers in spades. The protagonist, “Our Woman,” leads a working class Irish farm life, but after seeing her Afghanistan-bound son engage in hanky-panky with another man in the fields, and learning that her deceased husband may not have been the man she thought, goes on a truth-seeking odyssey of self-discovery.”

I was especially thrilled to find Malarky on a list that contained the wonderful Alison Becdel’s new book!

Nifty plugs for Malarky I

Malarky has received a nifty plug/review at this Something Daily blog: (click on the text for the complete review)

The end result is one of the most memorable voices in recent years in CanLit, and a very distinctive book. Schofield spent ten years crafting this character, and it’s evident she has. “Our Woman,” as she’s called in most of the book, feels perfectly rendered and we root for her with an uncommon compassion. She accomplishes this largely through the use of an atypical narrative structure.

“Malarky is like nothing else, and what everything should be,” Kerry Clare reviews Malarky

When I wrote Malarky I chose a rotating point of view, I wanted that 360 degree circle, in close up, on one woman. I wanted one ordinary woman to matter, so I committed to her in my prose in an unremitting, relentless manner. I called her Our Woman to complete that sense of rotation as I wanted the reader to feel ownership over her or to possess her. To be engaged in her life like you might follow a favourite sports team (to cheer for her, to despair for her) or something you’re passionate about and long to have intimate knowledge of. (I should say that I learn so much about this book from readers, their responses make me aware of things I’d no notion of — the book forms new or unnoticed shadows.)

I never anticipated my novel would be embraced and understood with this same 360 degree wholeness. It is a great privilege to be understood, that’s all I can say about Kerry Clare’s careful and engaged reading of Malarky. Please click on this extract to read the entire review.

Malarky is a journey beyond the limits of love, an equally sad and hilarious portrait of motherhood.

“Malarky is like nothing else, and what everything should be,” is something I wrote down this weekend. First, because it’s as funny as it’s dark, and also because it dares readers to be brave enough to follow along an unconventional narrative. Though the winding path is only deceptively tricky– Our Woman’s voice is instantly familiar, and the shifting perspectives remain so intimate and immediate that the reader follows. Consenting to be led, of course, which is the magic of Malarky. This is a book that will leave you demanding more of everything else you read.

Mighty Malarky review in mighty New Brunswick

Click on the image to enlarge and read this mighty review for Malarky written by Chad Pelley published in the Telegraph Journal Newspaper (New Brunswick) last Saturday. Thank you for reading and reviewing my book New Brunswick!

Happy Days: Malarky Vancouver Launch

People’s Co-op Bookshop launch for Malarky April 1, 2012

Thank you to the great crowd of warm people who came out over the three hours and bought every single copy in the shop! It was so wonderful to see you all. Thanks to my son and Cameron Wilson for playing great fiddle music and laments and to Lori W. who made her debut on ukelele singing one my fave songs Miss Otis Regrets so beautifully. Thank you to Grandma Suzu and Toni for the fine food and thanks to Lindsay Brown and Siobhan Airey for these pics. Happy Days!

Reviews

Scott Esposito has written a thoughtful, interrogative review of Malarky on his blog Conversational Reading.

I really appreciate this review because it is, as reviews should be, an engaging piece of writing in its own right. (Of course I might quarrel with his notion on ethos, preferring McGahern’s idea that the particular is the way to the general but that’s for another blog.) I was fascinated by his analysis of the prose and will give thought to his questions. Click on the quote below to read the entire review.

In terms of structure and voice, Malarky is an exemplary read, showing itself to be far ahead of most debut novels.

Thanks to Scott Esposito and Marcus Pactor for reading and writing these considerations of my work. Much appreciated.

Reviews

Some thoughtful and interrogative reviews/ blogs have been posted about Malarky.

Marcus Pactor wrote a mid-book review, which is a curious concept that I might join him in writing sometime. I like the continuum that a mid-book review gives to the act of reading. It establishes that it’s ongoing.

Some extracts from Pactor’s blog

“The personal becomes political” is  worn, too.   Schofield turns it around so that the political becomes personal.   We’re very much in the post-9/11 world, but Our Woman’s mostly absorbed by her own life.  She’s interested in Afghanistan mostly because that’s where her homosexual son Jimmy took off to.  She’s interested in Syria because that’s where her latest lover’s from.  When she and her husband watch the news and see riots on the West Bank, she comments: “’Well whether they’re nutters or not,’ I said, ‘they’re lovely looking people.  Look at the great faces on those young men, see the elasticity in their skin and the beards make them look wise when they’re all but twenty.’”  This personalization is not a reduction.  New meanings and understandings of human value are assigned.  They have little to do with neocons and their useless counterparts.

Sentence-wise, she’s also  excellent.  You can hear the Irish voice articulating lovely, inventive metaphors. “One of her fleeting Ballyhaunis Bacon moments has just scraped by her, when the pork of her husband’s action clouts her forcefully out of nowhere and she finds brief comfort in the thought of him, entering the factory to have his flesh separated from his bones for betraying her the way he has.”

Read the entire post here

Launch report

Thanks a million to everyone who came out yesterday and packed the People’s Co-op bookshop for the launch of my novel Malarky. I have been so touched by the warm response to my book by so many. Thank you all again.

Thanks especially to Grandma Suzu and Toni who made such beautiful food and very decent tea in lovely china cups and saucers no less. Our friends Scot and Leanne added Jameson’s to the shot glasses and coffee. The place was hopping.

Lovely music played by my son on the fiddle, Miss Otis Regrets sung richly by Lori Weidenhammer making her debut on Ukelele and the later hour duets with Cameron Wilson, esteemed violinist and composer and my son Cuan who played a rendition of Tom Anderson’s lament Da Slockit Light, Devils Dream and The Fishers Rant.

The People’s Co-op is a lovely spot for a book launch and a lovely spot to sell out of every book we had. We sold 51 books and could have sold another 10! It was a lively day on the Drive, a festival and protest was taking place down the street and the sun was out for us all.

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Saturday, the day before yesterday’s launch, I participated in the New Star Firebombing Benefit at the Western Front. It was again a super event: 15 readers and a hub of determined good will. I loved reading in a group that had George Stanley reading a poem called The Vacuum Cleaner in it. Fred Wah also read some intriguing stuff from his early 70’s poetry collection Tree, which i am now keen to read. To be honest the cross section of writers and audience reminded me of descriptions I’ve read or heard or perhaps imagined took place in Vancouver in the 1970’s or perhaps a bit earlier. As I read it struck me how influenced my novel Malarky is by what I have been exposed to here in literature and poetry and by the many writers who have supported me here.  It was a reading which made me feel very much at home here. Maybe because of the collective and determined manner in which people had come together. Much of the material that was read also resonated with this.

Reading the car park hours

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to VPL last night for the Incite reading. It was a great, lively night and I loved reading with Tamara Faith Berger and Ben Wood. I am just about to crack Tamara’s book Maidenhead. I hugely admired Tamara’s reading. We had a great exchange about writing and thinking and so on. Ben also told me fun tales about when he was a singer/songwriter.  One thing he said that stayed with me was a description of trying to persuade someone you really know will like a particular album to listen to it and the resistance therein. Great stories into the small hours. I managed to get my car locked in the car park which in turn became another story. Thank you to the very kind nightwatchman who helped me.