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Lynn Coady
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English
The Anansi Reader: Forty Years of Very Good Booksby Lynn CoadyISBN 0887847757 (0-88784-775-7)
Softcover, House of Anansi Pr
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The Journey Prize Stories 20: The Best of Canada's New Writersby Various, Neil Smith, Lynn Coady , Heather O'NeillISBN 0771043430 (0-7710-4343-0)
Softcover, Emblem Editions
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Mean Boyby Lynn CoadyISBN 0385659768 (0-385-65976-8)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mean Boy'Book summary:Earnest, small-town Lawrence Campbell is fascinated by his poetry professor, the charismatic and uncompromising Jim Arsenault. Larry is determined to escape a life of thrifty drudgery and intellectual poverty working for his parents motel and mini-golf business on Prince Edward Island. Jim appears to the young poet as a beacon of authenticity mercurial, endlessly creative, fearless in his confrontations with the forces of conformity. And he drinks a lot.
Jims magnetic personality soon draws Larrys entire poetry composition class into his orbit. Among the other literary acolytes are Sherrie Mitten, with her ringletted blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, the turtlenecked, urbane Claude who writes villanelles, and the champion of rhyming couplets about the heroic struggles of the Maritime proletariat, Todd. Casting a huge shadow over the group is the varsity football player and recreational drug user Chuck Slaughter titanically strong, capriciously violent, hilariously indifferent to the charms of the poetic life who has nearly given up terrifying Larry in order to pursue an awkward romantic interest in Sherrie.
Drawn by ambition and fascination, the group assembles itself fawningly around Jim, tagging along to bars, showing up at readings, thrilled to be invited to Jims home, a shambling farmhouse in the woods where he lives with Moira, his shrewish backwoods muse. Lost in adulation, Larry is so delighted to be singled out for Jims attention that he does not pause to wonder what Jim expects from his increasingly close relationship with the young poet.
Closely observed and deeply funny, Mean Boy tells the story of Larrys year-long battle against the indiscriminate use of quotation marks in advertising and his disillusionment as his narcissistic, hard-drinking idol spins out of control and threatens to take the young mans cherished notions about art and poetry down with him. Mean Boy is Lynn Coadys most polished and ambitious work to date. [via]
Play the Monster Blindby Lynn CoadyISBN 0385259581 (0-385-25958-1)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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Saints of Big Harbourby Lynn CoadyISBN 0385659008 (0-385-65900-8)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Saints of Big Harbour: A Novel'Book summary:Saints of Big Harbour, Lynn Coady's second novel, begins with some of the funniest work ever produced by a Canadian novelist. The opening chapter is narrated by Guy Boucher, the novel's hapless teenage protagonist, and it reads as though someone has cleverly translated Adrian Mole into a tiny Nova Scotian town. Guy introduces his family: his impoverished mother, Marianne; his uncontrollable, alcoholic, and incredibly charismatic uncle, Isadore; and his meek, almost unnoticeable sister, Louise. We also meet Alison Mason, Isadore's (male) drinking companion and Guy's sometime English teacher. Despite the bleakness of his surroundings, Guy is a cheerful lad with only one goal in mind: to use Isadore's truck to attend dances in the nearby town of Big Harbour and thereby find a town girlfriend.
And Guy does just this, briefly, spending one night dancing with the beautiful Corrine Fortune. Soon, however, Corrine won't speak to Guy, and not long after, all of the characters' lives fall into chaos. Isadore's drinking habit once again progresses into a rampage, the people of Big Harbour begin hearing rumours that Guy has done something unnamable to Corrine, and Alison Mason begins to drown in drink.
Coady is a superb storyteller, and Saints of Big Harbour moves gracefully from perspective to perspective as it examines the lives of these luckless characters. The book is painfully depressing at times, but never gloomy--Coady's incredible comic gift keeps her story well paced. This is a very fine novel, far better than the ever-growing mob of small-town-Maritimes fiction. --Jack Illingworth [via]
More editions of Saints of Big Harbour:
- Saints of Big Harbour: ISBN 0618119760 (0-618-11976-0)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin - Saints of Big Harbour : A Novel: ISBN 0224063162 (0-224-06316-2)
Softcover, Random House - Saints of Big Harbour : A Novel: ISBN 0618380450 (0-618-38045-0)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin - Saints of Big Harbour: ISBN 0385258682 (0-385-25868-2)
Hardcover, Doubleday Canada - Saints of Big Harbour: A Novel: ISBN 0385659008 (0-385-65900-8)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
- Saints of Big Harbour: ISBN 0618119760 (0-618-11976-0)
Saints of Big Harbour Proofby Lynn CoadyISBN 0224068962 (0-224-06896-2)
Softcover, Random House
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Strange Heavenby Lynn CoadyISBN 0385659148 (0-385-65914-8)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Strange Heaven'Book summary:Strange Heaven is tearfully hilarious, as funny and appalling as reality. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has come to Halifax from industrial Cape Breton, had her baby, and given it up for adoption. Transferred to the psych ward of the children’s hospital, she’s incarcerated with five seriously disturbed teenagers and a flock of wan children. She’s depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget is a bit detached, but Four South is peaceful compared with the chaos back home. Her grandmother, Margaret P., raves and prays from her bed, banging the wall with her bedpan. Bridget’s parents, Robert and Joan, take care of her and her mentally handicapped son, Rollie. Joan tries to keep the lid on, but she’s no match for Robert’s wild profanity, Margaret’s dementia, and Rollie’s efforts to join the fray. Uncle Albert, a kind man who saves his eloquent wrath for outsiders, springs Bridget from the hospital for Christmas. But home is more chaotic than ever, and she’s sick of her boozy friends and the whining of the baby’s father. She had half planned to hibernate at home till kingdom come, but it’s become like a lurid movie she saw eons ago and she’s forgotten the plot. Her future may be unclear, but she has a good idea of the direction it won’t take. [via]
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Victory Meatby Lynn CoadyISBN 0385658923 (0-385-65892-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Victory Meat'Book summary:That Lynn Coady chose to name her anthology of cutting-edge Atlantic fiction after a butcher shop is telling. As the author of the critically acclaimed novels Strange Heaven and Saints of Big Harbour observes in her introduction, Fredericton's Victory Meat Market has "an impertinent, gritty sort of toughness that has yet to be buffed over by the well-meaning architects of nostalgia and sentiment." Like Victory Meat ("there to sell meat, damnit, not postcards"), the 14 short stories in this collection eschew stereotypes of traditional East Coast writing, what Coady calls the "At-Can myths" of quaint fishing villages, Celtic heritage, and close-knit communities.
There are no kilt-clad, fiddle-playing folkies in these iconoclastic tales by the likes of Rabindranath Maharaj, Michael Winter, Carol Bruneau, Christy Ann Conlin, and George Elliott Clarke. Instead, you'll meet a belligerent West Indian immigrant whose idea of the perfect revenge is buying a big hunk of pork, a Halifax detective who is being poisoned by the smut all around him, and an eight-year-old girl with a perverse longing for pain. Wry and sometimes embarrassingly honest, stories like Kelly Cooper's "Conjugal Approaches" and Lee D. Thompson's "The Whales" demonstrate that Newfoundland and Maritime writers are not only ready to reveal what's underneath their kilts but eager to experiment with the conventions of storytelling as well.
Some of these brave new fictions have real bite--for example, R.M. Vaughan's quirky homecoming tale "Saint Brendan's." But if you're looking for a hefty serving of good old-fashioned story, Victory Meat isn't going to fit the bill. Even the best-written pieces--Lisa Moore's lyrically sensuous "Melody" and Peter Norman's drama about teenaged boys--promise more in the way of plot and characterization than they deliver. The truth is that Coady's selections could have just as easily come out of a trendy grocery store in Toronto: lots of parsley, not much meat. --Lisa Alward [via]
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The Whirlpoolby Jane Urquhart, Lynn CoadyISBN 0771034768 (0-7710-3476-8)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Whirlpool'Book summary:The loosely connected lives of a military historian, his wife, a poet, a funeral home proprietor, and her odd son gradually interlock in Jane Urquhart's first novel, The Whirlpool. This mesmerizing novel, which won France's Best Foreign Book Award, illustrates in perfectly polished, lyrical prose the mind-altering effects of landscape. Urquhart draws utterly separate, lonely individuals, each focused primarily on a singular obsession. David McDougal, a diehard Canadian nationalist and military historian, has temporarily moved into the woods above a whirlpool in Niagara Falls with his wife, Fleda. David fantasizes about Laura Secord, whom he imagines his wife resembles, while focusing on his work. Fleda spends her time obsessed with poetry, particularly Robert Browning, much to her husband's dismay since he would prefer she focus on a Canadian poet. When David meets Patrick, a fledgling Canadian poet, he introduces him to Fleda. Unknown to David, Patrick knows Fleda well, since he had been stalking her in the woods. In Patrick's mind, Fleda becomes intertwined with his own obsession--the landscape.
In town nearby, Maud Grady oversees the burials of the townspeople, the sick children rendered perfect in death, and the daredevils who try to take on the falls. She also waits for the inevitable "floaters": drowned, swollen bodies plucked from the water by the Old River Man, a hobo who lives by the riverbed. The narrative spins, maelstrom-like, until it reaches its crest, where obsessions unravel, old notions are dispelled, and one brave soul faced with the whirlpool decides to take the plunge. --Leah Eichler [via]
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French
Les Saints de Big Harbour: Romanby Lynn CoadyISBN 2760932524 (2-7609-3252-4)
Hardcover, Lemeac Editeur, Incorporated
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