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
Malarky in Georgia Straight
Lovely write up for Malarky in today’s Georgia Straight’s Best Spring Reads article. I was reassured to read the writer cottoned on to the political elements and the humour in the book.
Here’s a link to the piece, click on this quote from it below.
Lovely image sent to me by a reader this morning
I particularly appreciate the hot water bottle, as am a great worshipper of this essential invention.
Vancouver books @ 49th Shelf
I have a piece published today at the 49th Shelf (formerly Canadian Bookshelf) today. It’s a piece in which I finally have an opportunity to talk about Renee Rodin’s memoir Subject to Change, a book I’ve wanted to highlight for a while. I also include Taxi!, Crossings and Adventures in Debt Collection.
Here is the opening to the piece, click the link to read the rest.
The domestic features significantly in my debut novel Malarky. Domestic territory and behaviour are surveyed, examined and subverted within it. Lest this give the impression I am way domestic, I assert from blast off that vacuuming is the sole household task I excel at. If there was a way to vacuum and read simultaneously I would do it. I have succeeded in walking and reading. I have almost succeeded at knitting and reading, but vacuuming and reading still evades me.
When I was frustrated writing Malarky I would turn on the vacuum. The straight lines, diagonals and heave-ho repetition improved my disposition, but inevitably my mind wandered to books I wanted to revisit. Sometimes to simply reacquaint with a sole paragraph.
Here are some, of the many, local Vancouver books that have caused me to strand the hoover in the middle of the floor and search for a paragraph or moment in them.
To continue reading click here
Malarky reading @ Incite (VPL) March 21, 2012
I am looking forward very much to reading from Malarky, along with Tamara Faith Berger (Maidenhead) and Ben Wood (The Bellwhether Revivals), at the Vancouver International Writers Festival’s reading series Incite.
The reading will take place on March 21, 2012 at 7.30pm in the Alice McKay room at the Vancouver Public Library. Admission is free.
Malarky will be for sale and I will be happy to sign copies.
Thanks a million to VIWF for inviting me. I’m glad to be returning to the Alice McKay room, where we had our Taxi! and Crossings events, of which I still have such strong, warm memories and am excited to meet both authors and learn about their work.
Malarky mentioned in today’s Irish Times book column
So touched to see Malarky mentioned in the Loose Leaves column in today’s Irish Times. Thank you so much to the journalists who work in the book section there and to everyone who has responded warmly and with an open mind to my novel. It has been a very long 10 years, so am deeply appreciative.
Happy Days!
Malarky selected for Barnes & Noble Summer 2012 Discover Great New Writers program
Some wonderful, if not miraculous news for my novel Malarky (publishing March 15): Barnes & Noble have selected Malarky for their Summer 2012 Discover Great New Writers program.
Some of my favourite writers like Colum McCann, Cormac McCarthy and many more were previously been selected for this program.
I sincerely thank the committee of volunteer booksellers, who made the selection and who volunteer their time and labour to do so. I look forward to hearing from and meeting readers who may discover Malarky because of this program.
Merci encore! This is incredible news!
Today my partner reports back that unusually he took his walk in the rain and how it grew on him. It was atmospheric and he enjoyed “the ambiance of the clouds, the glow from the ships and city lights and the vortex created by the blackness of the water.”
Ha!!
He is also wearing the jumper I knitted him for xmas. The first jumper I have ever knitted in this lifetime. It’s is so endearing this creation ! And when I see it on him, well I get a little chesty smile at the sight of it. It really has a bit of a Middle Earth look about it (due to a number of technical challenges with the wrong sized needles and having to go avant-garde on the pattern as a result).
*
The last two days were the equivalent of a literary long distant- no-sleep truck drive. But Malarky is on her way to you. Enfin! Thank you so much to everyone who is showing such warmth and curiosity about my novel. It was a long haul. (10 years)
Q&Q Spring Preview 2012
Quill and Quire included my novel Malarky in their Spring Preview 2012 article today :
Biblioasis is comparing Irish-Canadian writer Anakana Schofield’s debut novel, Malarky ($19.95 pa., April), to Brecht’s Mother Courage and Beckett’s Endgame. When Philomena discovers her son canoodling with another man and is informed of her husband’s (possibly invented) indiscretions, she embarks on a journey of discovery that involves grief, resilience, and something like madness.
Malarky will be published in March, the publication date has been brought forward a tad.
I am also looking forward to Anne Fleming’s short fiction collection, Marie-Claire Blais novel (Mai at the Predator’s Ball), Teresa McWhirter’s stories and Tim Bowling’s unscrupulous salmon canners practices and numerous others books this year.
Malarky! Most Anticipated!
Thank you to Canadian Bookshelf who have selected my novel Malarky (due out in March) as one of the most anticipated titles of the season.