Spring preview 2014: fiction, non-fiction, and international highlights

In the January/February issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the season’s most anticipated fiction, non-fiction, and international titles.

Click on the thumbnails to read more about eight titles you’ll be hearing more about this spring.

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99191 Let's face it, writes Sina Queyras on her website, in language that is typically direct and confrontational, the world / Is a shrinking place and hungry: too much grief / To feed. In collections such as Expressway and the Lambda Literary Award“winning Lemon Hound, Queyras has chronicled such grief in poetry that is simultaneously vigorous, angry, and innovative. As the driving force behind Lemon Hound, an erstwhile one-woman blog that has morphed into a full-fledged online literary magazine, she has also provided a venue for voices “ both experimental and traditional “ that have frequently been marginalized by more mainstream or established publications. Often castigated for her strongly held opinions (the kind that are commonly praised as sharply incisive when issued from the mouths of male critics), Queyras is, in fact, not nearly as divisive as she is accused of being. Her philosophy of inclusive humanism is on full display in her new collection, M x T (Coach House Books, $17.95 pa.), which uses allusion, science, and history as mechanisms for elegiac mourning. The poet's paean to memory and its effects appears in March. “ Steven W. Beattie The provocateur: Sina Queyras https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/SineQ-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/SineQ.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/SineQ.jpg 399 500 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/sineq-2/ sineq-2 0 0

99190 Much ink has been spilled concerning Toronto's indecent and seemingly indestructible mayor Rob Ford. In the beginning there were those who came out to defend (or condemn) his right-wing populist politics and apparent commitment to stemming the flow of gravy at City Hall. Unfortunately, as the world is now aware, the political was soon overshadowed by the personal. Robyn Doolittle, a Toronto Star journalist involved in breaking the crack-video controversy last May, details the foibles that have dogged Toronto's (allegedly) drug-taking, profanity-spewing mayor in Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (Viking Canada, $30 cl., Feb.). Though the story has been widely reported by Doolittle and others, the author's tight-lipped publisher promises the book contains shocking revelations. Considering the mayor's alleged ties to criminals and an ongoing police investigation, what could possibly be next? “ Julie Baldassi All aboard the crazy train: Robin Doolittle https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/RobinDoolittle-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/RobinDoolittle.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/RobinDoolittle.jpg 500 495 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/robindoolittle/ robindoolittle 0 0

99189 In 2003, Maggie de Vries published Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss, which told the story of the author's younger sister, a drug addict and sex worker who vanished from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Four years after the book appeared, Robert Pickton was charged with her murder. In Rabbit Ears (HarperCollins Canada, $14.99 pa., March), de Vries revisits the painful story of her sister, spinning it into a fictional tale about a girl named Kaya who follows a similar downward spiral, but is saved through the efforts of her sister. I wanted to tell a story about a girl who went through what my sister went through but survived, a story about a girl who broke the silence that was holding her prisoner, explains de Vries, who was inspired to write the book after discovering that her sister had suffered sexual abuse as a child. I found myself haunted by this new information, trying to take it in, to understand this new part of my sister's experience, and her silence. Rabbit Ears arose from that haunting. “ Dory Cerny Disappearing act: Maggie deVries https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/MaggiedeVries-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/MaggiedeVries.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/MaggiedeVries.jpg 353 500 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/maggiedevries-2/ maggiedevries-2 0 0

99188 In addition to her bona fide literary chops, Governor General Literary Award winner Kate Pullinger has been at the forefront of experimentation in the realm of digital publishing. Her 2012 hybrid project, Inanimate Alice (co-created with Chris Joseph and Andy Campbell), combined text, animation, and video; the first episode won the IBM Prize for New Media. Not content to rest on her digital laurels, Pullinger convinced her publisher, Doubleday Canada, to create an interactive API (application programming interface) in conjunction with her new novel, Landing Gear ($29.95 cl., April). Launched at San Francisco's inaugural Hackday conference in October, the API allows users to manipulate, mix, and otherwise alter an excerpt from the novel, which traces the effects on the lives of several interconnected characters when a stowaway falls from the landing gear of an airplane and, miraculously, survives. This is the first time I've done anything that looks at the potential for the novel online, as opposed to a book or an ebook format, Pullinger told Q&Q last fall. I've never succeeded in interesting my book publishers in my digital work until now, so that's tremendously exciting for me that Random House was willing to experiment. “ Steven W. Beattie The new media maven: Kate Pullinger https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KatePullinger-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KatePullinger.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KatePullinger.jpg 448 500 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/katepullinger/ katepullinger 0 0

99187 Casual fans of Leonard Cohen may be surprised to learn that one of his most famous love songs (really a breakup song) is addressed to an actual person. While in her early twenties, Marianne Ilhen moved to Greece to be with her partner, Norwegian author Axel Jensen, who ultimately abandoned her and their newborn son. Soon after she met an obscure Canadian poet-musician while shopping for groceries, though she couldn't have known that the encounter would grow into a lengthy, passionate affair. In So Long, Marianne (ECW Press, $24.95 cl), translated from the Norwegian by Helle V. Goldman, author Kari Hesthamar tells the quixotic story of Ilhen, from her youth in Oslo to her bohemian life during the 1960s and beyond, and provides glimpses of her life with Cohen through previously unpublished poems, lyrics, letters, and photographs. The biography promises to be at once a poetic history, love story, and tale of self-discovery. “ Becky Robertson A muse's story: Kari Hesthamar https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KariHesth-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KariHesth.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/KariHesth.jpg 500 332 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/karihesth/ karihesth 0 0

99185 William Shakespeare lived in an era before modern science had relegated the stuff of magic, astrology, witchcraft, and superstition to the realm of fantasy. And yet the Western world was on the cusp of enormous intellectual transformation during his lifetime, which came at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution (he was, for instance, a contemporary of Galileo). Shakespeare scholars have typically assumed that the playwright was unaware of, or unconcerned with, the emerging science of the day, but lately a handful of experts “ Toronto journalist Dan Falk included “ have begun to connect the dots between Shakespeare's plays and the scientific ideas he alluded to. As Falk notes in The Science of Shakespeare: A New Perspective on the Playwright's Universe (Goose Lane Editions, $29.95 cl., April), which the author researched as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, there are no surviving letters or diaries that illuminate the Bard's private thoughts. However, Falk argues that not only was Shakespeare aware of changing conceptions of the cosmos, his plays, from Cymbeline to King Lear, are littered with astronomical references. “ Julie Baldassi Rebooting the Bard: Dan Falk https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/DanFalk-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/DanFalk.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/DanFalk.jpg 500 450 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/danfalk/ danfalk 0 0

99184 Though it has long been the case that Canada boasts a staggering number of absurdly talented writers of short fiction, the form has languished under the shadow of its bulkier, more unwieldy cousin, the novel. Perhaps all that started to change in 2013, when Alice Munro became the first Canadian resident to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and Lynn Coady won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her second collection, Hellgoing. The recognition of established short-story writers is encouraging, as is the continued appearance of promising newcomers. One such author is Claire Battershill, a native of Dawson Creek, B.C., who is already an award-winning writer. Battershill's story Circus won the 2008 CBC Literary Award for Short Fiction and shared the Emerging Writers Award from the Canadian Authors Association, and her story The Collective Name for Ninjas was shortlisted for the inaugural PEN International/New Voices Award. Both of Battershill's lauded stories appear in her debut collection, Circus ($22 pa.), which also features Two-Man Luge: A Love Story, set at the Winter Olympics, and a story about a British bureaucrat who gives himself 31 days to find love online. Find out what all the fuss is about when McClelland & Stewart publishes the book in April. “ Steven W. Beattie The storyteller: Claire Battershill https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/ChaireBattershill-90x90.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/ChaireBattershill.jpg https://stage.quillandquire.com/wp-content/uploads/ChaireBattershill.jpg 345 500 [] https://stage.quillandquire.com/book-news/2014/01/24/spring-preview-2014-fiction-non-fiction-and-international-highlights/slide/chairebattershill-3/ chairebattershill-3 0 0

Q&Q‘s spring preview covers books published between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2014. “¢ All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q‘s press time. “¢ Titles that have been listed in previous previews do not appear here.

This feature appeared in the January/February 2o14 issue of Q&Q.

Quill and Quire

Spring preview 2014: fiction, non-fiction, and international highlights

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