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.
“The Scotiabank Giller longlist: fine, but Malarky is missing” Montreal Gazette
Oh my. This is a very sweet sentiment. Thank you to Ian McGillis of the Montreal Gazette. Book Prize shortlists however are akin to the likelihood of nabbing a seat on the Space Shuttle, hence I have/had/will always have zero expectations.
Also, Book Prize culture usually insists on single conversations about single books. I am more concerned with the continuum and Malarky being in conversation with other books (as she is within her text) and/or art forms for that matter. The poets are reading her, I hope some day maybe Malarky will be taught and new understandings and interrogations can emerge.
I commend Mr McGillis for his column though because I have felt similiarly impassioned about the lack of people reading Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! I think his column could be the heartiest defence I receive in this lifetime!
Now, though, for my big beef: Where on earth is Anakana Schofield’s Malarky? The reception this years-in-gestation debut novel got last spring, both word-of-mouth and in the media, seemed to mark a rare case of a small-press literary novel getting widespread attention purely on the basis of its merits. There was no particular “hook” to this Ireland-set story of a (maybe) mad housewife other than its being so plainly, inarguably good; on a sentence-by-sentence level, and in its flawlessly sustained voice, it grabbed me as few novels have in recent years. Yes, I know, these things are subjective, but I’m frankly baffled by its exclusion. If it doesn’t make the GG list I’ll start to wonder if there’s something in the water, either mine or everyone else’s.
Malarky on tour Fall 2012 — part 1
Pretty soon I will be gearing up to attend a number of Writers Festivals which I am very fortunate to have been invited to this Autumn/Fall season. At these festivals I will be reading from Malarky and also participating in various panel events.
I begin at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 23, 2012 in New York. Here’s a link to the incredible programming called the Book End events. These are all free events taking place the week leading up to the festival and include 50 events.
These Book End events are in addition to the actual festival which takes place on Sunday 23, 2012 and will feature 280 authors and 104 panels. I am thrilled to be included in such an ambitious event and wish every city could enjoy the same. What I love about this particular festival is the events are for the most part all free.
The festival events will be uploaded on Sept. 4, 2012, so I shall post again and offer the link to them.
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After Brooklyn I move to Ontario where I’ll be reading for certain at the University of Trent reading series and possibly in Ottawa. (I will also return to Toronto for the IFOA (Harbourfront) Festival in late October.) My next stop after Ontario is Winnipeg’s Writers Festival THIN AIR I couldn’t be more excited as Winnipeg has a long labour history (including general strike re-enactments) so must put my research clogs on and be sure to take in some of the museums or such before I depart. I heard word of a train museum so must look it up. THIN AIR have already uploaded the list of my events with details. Click here to read. I will be reading with Daniel Allen Cox, (a Montreal writer I believe) and Missy Marston.
I return to Vancouver to appear at the Word On The Street, which is something of a homecoming for me as the first year I lived in Vancouver I performed an extract from my play at that very festival. I’ll be reading in the Canada Writes Tent on the Sunday around 12.20pm. (Link to follow)
In advance I thank all the volunteers and committees and staff who make these festivals possible for their labour and for generously inviting me to participate. Merci, merci. And my publisher Biblioasis for their support and The University of Trent for hosting me in their reading series.
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Quill & Quire front cover interview is live
This week the cover story interview I did for June’s Quill and Quire became available online. Thank you to Q&Q for showing such faith in me and to Cheri Hanson for such a thoughtful article. Click on the photo below to read it.
Golden Thursday
Thursday was a fantastic day. Katie Taylor took the Olympic gold medal in Women’s Boxing for Ireland and Seán Bán Breathnach expressed it like no other. Invoking the poets and presidents. Go hiontach ar fad!
The same day I learned I was on P22 of the Irish Echo talking about Malarky — a great day. Very special. I grew up on diaspora newspapers and the Readers Digest. (The Readers Digest in the US also wrote a lovely review of Malarky) Some years ago I traveled to the NYPL to look up the Irish Echo from 1963 specifically to read some community listings in the back of it. Why did I go that far? Because the paper was not available on microfiche or obtainable so if I wanted to see it, I had to go to NY. So it’s lovely to think that things have come the full circle. There’s something very Gertrude Stein about circles. More of them please!
I leave it to SBB.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgMicT1GFaY&w=560&h=315]
Toronto Star calls Malarky fascinating, absolutely beautiful
Insightful review and perspective on Malarky from Georgie Binks in today’s Toronto Star. Great to have this reflection on the book as it speaks to the inner monologues of everyday folk. This piece about Malarky also deals with the book that was written, rather than speculating on or demanding the one that wasn’t, which is ditto cheering.
Some clips from the review:
“Malarky is a fascinating voyage into the mind of a woman embattled but surviving during and after the deaths of her husband and son, the latter being the true tragedy from which she must recover. The central character of the book, Philomena a.k.a. “Our Woman,” is kind enough to share the running commentary of her life in an Irish patter that could easily mirror the thoughts of many women at mid-life, if in fact, mid-life these days is when the kids have left and the husband has died or departed.
Schofield admits, “I wrote that book unapologetically for and about women. I find the ordinary working class woman fascinating. I like to write about ordinary people who usually don’t get written about.”
“…”What I love about Malarky is the absolutely beautiful, almost lyrical, but very simple turns of phrase Schofield employs. Little truths like her observations that youth is not wasted on the young but that age is wasted on the old or that widows — first considered a novelty — soon become the remnants of the person who is gone.”
Click here to read the entire Toronto Star review of Anakana Schofield’s novel Malarky
Malarky invited to Wordstock Portland Book Festival
I was delighted to hear the news I have been invited to Wordstock the Portland Book Festival in the Fall. I am excited to visit Portland as I’ve never been.
Thank you indeed to Wordstock for the invitation.
Malarky selected for Amazon Best Books of 2012 So Far list in 2 categories
This week or Friday gone, Amazon.ca announced it’s Best Books of the Year So Far list and Malarky was selected in 2 categories! Given there are only 10 spots in each category that was a coup.
It was happy days to be listed alongside Tamara Faith Berger’s novel Maidenhead (also in 2 categories) as our books speak to something in between them. Perhaps the assumptions made about women’s sexuality. I read with Tamara in March at VPL (along with Ben Wood whose novel is also listed) and enjoyed her company and our discussions greatly.