The Authors Book Club

Connecting readers and authors in Canada
  • Welcome!
  • About Us
  • Blog Feed
  • Invite An Author
  • Resources
  • FAQ
  • News, Events, etc.
  • Fiona Reads
  • Writers In Trees
  • Contact
  • Tag: CanLit

    • Catching up with David Albertyn

      Posted at 1:37 pm by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Jan 2nd

      Guest Post by Syeda Shanzay Kamran

      It’s been a year since David took a break from The Authors Book Club, an initiative he co-created in January 2019. In this interview, we catch up with him to see how he’s been doing.

      Photo credit: David Albertyn

      Shanzay: Undercard, released in 2019, was on the Crime Reads 2020 must-read list of 8 Debut Novels, was a finalist in the 2020 Evergreen Award, and one of 49th Shelf’s top fiction titles of 2019. How has the journey into the writer’s world been? Were you surprised by anything?

      David: Coaching tennis has basically been my day job since I finished university, and transitioning from that to focusing on writing my book was a big change. After the release of Undercard, I was suddenly doing interviews and things like that. It was a lot of fun, but at times overwhelming. I did put quite a lot of pressure on myself. Maybe this was because I was a first-time author, but I felt very grateful to my publisher for giving me that opportunity, and I felt this great responsibility to sell a lot of books. I think perhaps I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on myself in that regard and instead, just experienced it.

      Another thing is, when you’re unpublished, your first book is your door to entering the industry. It is kind of a weird mix of you getting this incredible opportunity; you want to capitalize on it to make sure that you have a long-lasting career. But at the same time, it’s a big thing, and it is something that you should just experience, so I think balancing that is a skill. This wasn’t something I had an understanding of going in.

      Shanzay: In an interview with Fiona Ross, you shared that we might be seeing Undercard on the big screen? Can you share any updates?

      David: For sure! The big difference between that and writing is that with a book you have an agent either accept your work or not. Whereas in screen work, it seems as if there are countless little steps along the way. The project has moved quite a long way. They got a screenwriter and they are developing it. I believe it’s close to being a series. Hopefully, we should know by next year. It’s fascinating because there are lots of people and a lot of production companies attached to it. It’s really exciting!

      Shanzay: You mentioned in an interview with Tom Sumner that you’re working on a new book about the tennis world and crime fiction.

      David: It’s grown quite large. I’m not sure if we will end up doing a large book, or maybe it will be divided into more than one book. It’s funny because when I started, I thought of it as humour, drama, murder mystery revolved around the tennis club world. Undercard was intense, so I thought something comedic would be nice. One of the characters, Antoine, who is a pivotal character, is intense. It was quite emotionally taxing to write it. By the end, I was like, this is a lot more than I thought. It’s not the same as Undercard, though it is still more relationship-based. It’s been a lot of work. By this summer I hope to have a nice solid manuscript.

      Shanzay: You shared that you did a lot of research for your first book, Undercard, on boxing and how that world works. Do you enjoy the process? How do you weave your research into the storytelling? Is that easy or challenging?”

      David: Weaving research into your story, I would say, is almost like a puzzle. It is sort of this complex puzzle of information about things you find interesting, that are important, that are maybe not being discussed enough. Or there may be interesting things that are just useful for people to learn about and are potentially valuable, especially an intriguing discussion that comes from academics or journalists. I find weaving that in extremely challenging, but in a fun way. I find that it is one of my favourite parts of writing.

      Not only that, but I find that it is one of my strengths to take my research and weave it organically into my work, in a way that flows. If someone is reading my book purely for entertainment, it should be captivating and should have a flow to it.

      Shanzay: Out of curiosity I wanted to ask, how do you take a fact and turn it into something that has depth enough for both your characters and your reader to feel?

      David: One thing that works for me is when I am writing, I don’t like to have my research notes with me. I try to recall my research and just go with the flow. Then, when I’m in the editing process, I return to my notes and see where I can add my research. I sometimes feel like, in books and/or fiction, you come across a scene, and you can just tell that this person liked this part of their research and put that in there.

      I would say in terms of details, I find that the least interesting part. That’s something where you can refer to your research, especially in the editing process. Throw a detail in there just to give the reader a sense of the world without going overboard.

      Shanzay: How did 2021 impact your writing? Do you plan on including these years in your books in the future?

      David: Recently I was watching Salman Rushdie, and he was saying that young writers shouldn’t feel like they have to write about the pandemic. But for me generally, my ideas take a long time, so by the time I’m writing something, it has already happened a long time ago. The current book is set in 2018/2019 because I started writing it before the pandemic started, so it made no sense to include it. But I think at some point I might be writing about this period.

      In terms of how it affected me, I think 2020 wasn’t as productive as I would have liked it to be. There was so much going on. I had a couple of people close to me who were having a rough time, and I was trying to be there for them. It slowed me down and my writing. But otherwise the year has been quite productive.

      Shanzay: Are you reading anything now? What books would you say are “must-reads for 2021”?

      David: I’m re-reading Watership Down by Richard Adams. I really love it. I started reading Alice in Wonderland just because I was watching Westworld, the TV series, and it is a recurring theme in it. A book for writing that I always go back to is Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I love that book. I just love her style. I’ve read the whole series. My favourite is probably the middle one, Bring Up The Bodies. When I’m stuck writing, I go back to the opening chapter and think that this is how I want to write. I’m also reading Dubliners by James Joyce, which is a book of short stories. When I’m writing, I like to read people whose styles match mine.

      This interview has been edited for length and clarity.


      Syeda Shanzay Kamran is a co-op student with The Soap Box Press. Her vision is to bring comfort and happiness through her work.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, Canadian author, canadian book clubs, CanLit, david albertyn, Fiona Ross, the authors bookclub, Undercard
    • Spring 2021 Newsletter

      Posted at 3:00 pm by TheAuthorsBookClub
      May 24th

      More than a year later, we continue to reimagine ways to connect readers with authors living and working in Canada. We have encouraged virtual book club meetings and tried new and creative ways to bring people together, including our first “Book Tasting Event” co-hosted with The Soap Box Press. Authors Hannah Mary McKinnon, Victoria Hetherington, Cindy Aronson and Tamara Herman recommended food and drinks to pair with their books. They met with guests in private virtual rooms for this highly interactive experience.

      New Releases Highlights

      Early 2021 brought us new reads like the mysterious Son of Sherlock (Dorothy Ellen Palmer), the awaited Starr Sign (C.S. O’Cinneide), and the romantic comedy, Accidentally Engaged (Farah Heron).

      April was a big month! The crime-riddled thriller, Lucky (Marissa Stapley), the darkly funny Six Weeks To Live (Catherine McKenzie), and the empowering Hana Khan Carries On (Uzma Jalaluddin) were released.

      As always, April showers brings May… books! A bunch of new titles are hitting the shelves this month!  The exciting Lost Immunity (Daniel Kalla) and the romantic Letters Across the Sea (Genevieve Graham) are out now. New thrillers, You Will Remember Me (Hannah Mary McKinnon), and The Sister’s Tale (Beth Powning), are available on May 25, 2021.

      See our complete Spring 2021 Newsletter.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, Beth Powning, book clubs, C.S. O'Cinneide, canadian authors, Canadian novels, CanLit, Catherine McKenzie, Daniel Kalla, Dorothy Ellen Palmer, Farah Heron, Fiona Ross, Genevieve Graham, Marissa Stapley, New Releases, The Authors Book Club, Uzma Jalaluddin
    • Plots & Pandemic: Virtual Meet & Greet with Dennis Bock

      Posted at 9:00 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Oct 4th

      Join us on October 18, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. ET to meet and chat with author Dennis Bock. We will begin with a short reading followed by a group discussion and Q & A.

      Register for this exclusive free event by emailing us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca. Spacing is limited to 12 guests.

      Dennis is an author, travel writer, book reviewer, and creative writing lecturer. His books have been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He has been a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Banff Centre, Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, and Santa Maddalena in Italy. His short stories have won several awards and have appeared in Glimmer Train, The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, and The Journey Prize Stories. Bock lives in Toronto.

      Dennis’s newest novel, The Good German, was released in fall 2020. Visit his publisher’s website to learn more about his books.

      Visit Dennis Bock’s website. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, Canadian author, canadian novel, CanLit, david albertyn, Dennis Bock, Fiona Ross, New Releases, Plots and Pandemic, The Authors' Book Club, The Good German
    • Plots & Pandemic: Virtual Meet & Greet with Farzana Doctor

      Posted at 12:10 pm by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Sep 8th

      It’s September! We’re happy to host our next Plots & Pandemic Series event! Join us on Sunday, September 20, 2020, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. EDT. Guests can interact with Farzana Doctor and with each other. We will begin with a short reading followed by a group discussion and Q & A.

      Register for this exclusive free event by emailing us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca. Spacing is limited to 12 guests.

      Farzana is an author of four novels: Stealing Nasreen, Six Metres of Pavement, All Inclusive, and Seven, which was released in September 2020. Farzana was recently named one of CBC Books’ “100 Writers in Canada You Need To Know Now”. She is also an activist, part-time psychotherapist and amateur tarot card reader.

      Visit Farzana’s website.

      Follow here on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, Canadian author, canadian novel, CanLit, david albertyn, DiverseCanLit, Farzana Doctor, Fiona Ross, The Authors Book Club
    • Authors, tell us a bit about yourselves … (more author interviews!)

      Posted at 10:00 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Sep 7th

      Check out our latest Author Interviews!

      Hannah Mary McKinnon
      Sister Dear
      Lisa de Nikolits
      The Rage Room
      Kelly S. Thompson
      Girls Need Not Apply
      Vanessa Farnsworth
      The Haweaters
      Brent Van Staalduine
      Boy
      See more videos!

      Visit our YouTube Channel to see more author events!

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, author interviews, book clubs, Brent Van Staalduinen, canadian, canadian authors, canadian book clubs, Canadian books, CanLit, david albertyn, Fiona Ross, Hannah Mary McKinnon, KellySThompson, Lisa di Nikolits, The Authors Book Club, vanessa farnsworth, Youtube interviews
    • For your viewing pleasure!

      Posted at 11:30 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Aug 13th

      Our ongoing uncertain times have inspired us to get creative! We want to keep supporting authors and to find opportunities to engage them with readers.

      We are now on YouTube! Check out what we’ve been doing so far:

      • Plots & Pandemic: Interactive Meet & Greet for Authors and Readers
      • Virtual book club launches
      • Author Interviews


      As well, each of us has our own little space in our YouTube community:

      Ann’s Corner features videos for writers and readers interested in the writing world.

      Fiona’s Corner focuses on book clubs and the reading community.

      The Caledon Women’s Book Club with guest author Farzana Doctor

      David’s Corner will be a series of entertaining videos for writers. More info to come soon.


      Is there something specific you’d like to see? We’d love to hear your ideas. Is there an author from our list you’d like to see interviewed or featured in any of our events? Let us know. Email us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca or comment below.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, book clubs, canadian authors, CanLit, david albertyn, Fiona Ross, online book clubs, Plots and Pandemic, The Authors Book Club, virtual book clubs, virtual book launch
    • I still get it wrong: judging a book by its cover

      Posted at 9:30 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      Jun 18th

      Post by Fiona Ross

      One of the biggest benefits of a book club (book clubs) is that you don’t get to always pick the books, other people do.  Now, let me tell you, as a teacher and librarian it’s not easy giving up that control or the power, but if you do, when you do, you may discover some happy surprises.

      The books I have read because I have had to as a reviewer, or as a book club member, are too many to list.  As a reader, my tastes lean to historical fiction, literary fiction, Canadian fiction and memoir. I tend to really favour female protagonists.  As a secondary school librarian, I read social justice (diverse literature) and YA.  For my beloved SUCCESS program at school I also include picture books.  I read widely.  And here is the rub, even after all these books and all this time, I still get it wrong.

      For example, when I joined The Authors’ Book Club, David Albertyn, our co-founder, sent me a copy of his novel Undercard as a thank you. He even wrote a lovely dedication inside.  I read the blurb and the synopsis, thought, “that’s nice” and filed it on my book shelf.  To be fair, I did think I would show it to my husband or middle son, because it might appeal to them.  I mean boxing? Vegas? A thriller?  Not exactly my cup of tea.

      And here we are. Six months later, a global pandemic, David’s U.S. release and an Authors’ Book Club event where I am moderating.  I can’t exactly show up when I haven’t read the book.  And you know what?  I love it. It is a story of friendship, intrigue, passion, history, boxing, racism, policing, military and so many other issues all woven in.  Mostly though, it is a well-paced story with likeable characters who you want to follow on their journey.  And really, isn’t that it?  Characters we care about, on a journey we can relate to.  Isn’t  that the essence of good storytelling and what readers want in a book? 

      I don’t like boxing.  I have never been to Las Vegas.  I am not a supporter of the police, or the military, and on the surface that is what this book is about.  But dig beneath the surface and it is a fast paced, rewarding read with relatable, interesting characters, and that is what readers want.

      So, if someone in your book club picks a book that doesn’t appeal.  Or, if you get a book as a gift that you would never pick for yourself, take a chance, dive in and actually read it.  Take it from me, a seasoned reader, it could be worth the chance. Just read.


      Fiona Ross is teacher librarian and book club consultant with The Authors’ Book Club. From the time she read her first novel, Bimbo and Topsy by Enid Blyton at age 6, she was hooked on fiction.  Fiona is an avid reader, a teacher librarian, a current member of two book clubs and past chair of the Secondary Fiction Review Committee at the Peel District School Board.  She also serves on the planning committee at the Festival of Literary Diversity, (FOLD). Although her job demands lots of YA she occasionally tries to read a book aimed at adult readers. 

      Follow Fiona on Twitter.

      Posted in Recommended Books | Tagged ann y.k. choi, canadian authors, Canadian books, CanLit, david albertyn, Fiona Ross, The Authors' Book Club, Undercard
    • The Spotlight Series: Curry by Naben Ruthnum

      Posted at 1:00 pm by TheAuthorsBookClub
      May 18th

      Featuring Coach House Books

      In Curry, Naben Ruthnum grapples with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing and depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations.

      Get a taste of Curry in the following excerpt, and read Naben’s thoughts on the passage below.

      *

      The second curry of note I’ll mention is Homecoming Shrimp Curry, which has become the staple meal I associate with Christmas in the Ruthnum household. It’s shouldered aside kleftiko and a Persian fish dish with a walnut stuffing as the go-to son-pleaser for my annual returns home, and my parents like it just as much as I do. It’s a deep greenish-brown, a shade you don’t often see in Indian restaurants outside of perhaps a saag: while Westerners may like brown food, they don’t like it to actually be brown. The sauce has a density earned by its ingredients and process: Mom makes the masala with large, motherfuckering onion chunks that would be the star of the dish if the sauce didn’t take a midmorning whirl through the food processor before being returned to the pan. The huge shrimp, decanted frozen into a colander from a frozen bag, like chilled practical effects from a 1980s alien-invasion movie before the sauce catches up to them and they’re subsumed into the curry, white and pink peaks in the murky simmer.

      Time and varying heat are key to this dish’s success, a daylong process of heating, settling, cooling, and boiling whose alchemy seems beyond science. That’s often part of curry narra- tives, too: the ineffable, inexplicable Eastern magic performed on electric Western stoves. Top British chef Heston Blumenthal, on his television show In Search of Perfection, where he sought to make perfected versions of classic dishes such as hamburger and steak by seeking out their ur-versions and distilling histor- ically successful processes into a measured, modern method, had scientists do a study on the use of yogourt in the marinade for chicken cooked in a tandoor for his tikka masala episode.

      While it was proven that yogourt vastly aided the marinade’s absorption, they couldn’t figure out  why. It just  did. While this  made  for  an  irresistible  y[  moment, and  I  don’t  doubt Mr.  Blumenthal’s  standards  or  the  BBC’s  scientist-hiring resources, it strikes me as odd that what seems like a simple matter of chemistry and biology should be insoluble.

      There’s no magic or formula involved in the time and heat factors of Homecoming Shrimp Curry, but there is particularity. As in many immigrant households, one of my parents prepared food in the morning and reheated it throughout the day, the knobs on the stove and eventually the button on the microwave enduring twists and pokes as mealtimes came around. In the case of this curry, the multiple simmerings are what elevate it to Christmas dinner and my first off-the-plane meal. The basics are simple, and as I can’t think of a good reason not to include the recipe, I’ll give it to you. Here’s a direct paste of the email that Mom sent me so I could botch the making of the dish:

      I called to inquire about the accuracy of this recipe, and it turns out my recall was wrong: Mom does food-process the onions before the cooking starts, not after. The pureeing-of- the-completed-sauce thing comes, I realize, from a Gordon Ramsay chicken tikka masala recipe I used to make all the time when I lived in Montreal, with a roommate who had a Cuisinart. Mom also leaves out the bit about time lapses and reheating throughout the day, but that’s hard to quantify on the page. I don’t follow the turmeric-fry step of the recipe-seems to me that the shrimp cook so fast, they should do it in the gravy where they belong. Then again, my dish somehow isn’t a patch to Mom’s: this is a trope, yes, but it remains true here – I know I can fix it if I master the timing.

      There are some moments in this recipe that an Indian- cuisine purist would find harrowing. For example, the ‘fish curry powder from Superstore.’ At the popular food blog Foodàó, Bay Area food writer Annada Rathi rails against these concoctions: ‘That’s when I feel like screaming from the rooftops, “Curry is not Indian!”; “Curry powder is not Indian!”; and “You will not find curry powder in Indian kitchens!”’ She’s certainly been in more kitchens in India than the zero I’ve entered, so I’ll take her word, but I’ll tell you this: every dias- poric kitchen I’ve opened cupboards in contains curry powder, even if it is a home blend of dry spices tipped into an old Patak’s screw-on glass jar. Rathi isn’t a hardliner – she goes on to note that ‘in the course of this article, it has dawned on me that “curry” is the most ambiguous and therefore the most flexible word, a broad term that conveys the idea of cooked, spiced, saucy or dry, vegetable, meat, or vegetable and meat dish in the most appropriate manner available.’ The spectacular imprecision of the term speaks to its ability to encompass centuries of food history, cooking, misinterpretation, and rein- vention: it’s truly the diasporic meal, even when it stays at home. Curry is only definably Indian because India is a country that has the world in it.

      There is a truth to the tropes of cooking and homeland and curry, but it can’t possibly contain the entire truth: the overlaps in this conversation between writers like Lahiri, Koul, and me are vast, covering our relationships to our parents and a land we barely know compared to the countries where we wake up every day. In the details, the distinct efforts to set personal experience apart – my insistence that Mom has no kitchen secrets and that cooking was never meant to be a key to the exotic but a passage to adulthood, Koul’s universal reflections on whether there is a point when one ever stops needing one’s mom, Lahiri’s foray into cookbook learning – are there, but I wonder if they are present for readers who are drawn to and receive these pieces. Are the brown, diasporic readers looking for commiseration? And are the non-brown ones looking for an exotic, nostalgic tour of a foreigner’s unknowable kitchen? The short answer, I believe, is yep.

      *

      This recipe comes at the end of a section of Curry where I discuss the homeland-authentic-magic of the cooking of brown mothers, in reality and in writing. I recall having a tough time with this part, in that I was pointing to a repetitive trope that I found confining, but with the awareness that I was also talking about the lived truth of many diasporic eaters and writers.

      That’s why I chose to discuss a curry that had a particular significance to the patterns of my life and to my literal homecomings–home for me being not India, not Mauritius, but rather unexciting Kelowna, B.C. The recipe, pasted verbatim from an email of my mother’s, gave me a chance to talk about curry powder, which is commonly targeted in food writing as being inauthentic and something that no real Indian would ever use. If that’s true, then my family is even further from India than time and geography would suggest, and I’m fine with that. The movements of diaspora and food culture, and the different labels that are appended to spice mixtures ground in Indian factories to be placed on Western grocery shelves are more interesting to me than enacting an authenticity that may have little to do with me, a Mauritian-Canadian whose family cooked with what we could access. 

      There is an accidental mother’s-magic-trope in here that I’m embarrassed to have missed at every stage of publication, except when I was asked to excerpt this recipe section for a magazine: Mom didn’t include any amounts next to the ingredients. This is a recipe you have to freehand and make several times before you can get it exactly right.

      Naben Ruthnum

      To continue reading, purchase Curry here!


      Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction, has been a National Post books columnist, and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Joyland, and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley’s first novel appeared in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.

      Connect with Naben.

      Posted in Guest Authors, Recommended Books | Tagged canadian authors, Canadian books, CanLit, Coach House Books, Curry, DiverseCanLit, Invite An Author, Naben Ruthnum, New Releases
    • The Spotlight Series: Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by Suzette Mayr

      Posted at 11:00 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      May 14th

      Featuring Coach House Books

      Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall, by Suzette Mayr, follows Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, who is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job’s finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral, her backstabbing fellow professors, a cutthroat new dean – and the fact that the sentient and malevolent Crawley Hall has decided it wants them all out, and the hall and its hellish hares will stop at nothing to get rid of them.

      Discover the world of Dr. Edith Vane by reading the excerpt and Suzette Mayr’s thoughts on the passage below.

      *

      She hears the dripping. A steady drip of the tap in the bathroom across the corridor. A drip that intensifies, pokes into her concentration, fragments her midnight genius. She pushes the exams away, stands up from her desk, slips her keys into her pocket.

      She pushes open the washroom door into moonless black. The sound of water running from a tap. She flicks on the switch. Only one fluorescent light flickers on. The ceiling gutted and cavernous.

      Her heart startles, clatters in her chest.

      A woman in a yellow dress bends over the sinks. Coral, rinsing her mouth.

      Coral’s hand stops, mid-rinse, her hand still cupped over her mouth, water drip-dripping, her bloodshot eyes gazing at Edith through the dim reflection in the mirror.

      – I’m sorry, Edith half shouts. – I didn’t know anyone else was in here. You scared the stuffing out of me. Coral! You’re back, she sighs. – You’re back from the hospital. I’m so glad to see you.

      Edith sighs again, holds out her hand.

      Coral’s hand stays cupped to her mouth.

      – I was so worried about you, Edith says.

      Vestiges of water curl down Coral’s forearm, drip from her elbow into the sink. Edith drops her hand.

      Edith knows it would look stupid to leave the bathroom without using it, so she shuts herself into a cubicle, shoots the bolt of the door, and pulls down her pants. Sits down.

      She hears the faucet turn on, then off. Then on again.

      She pees, wipes, stands up, and refastens her pants. She swings open the cubicle door.

      Coral is still standing there, her back still to Edith. Her hair straight and shiny as a red toy car.

      Coral’s fingers over her mouth, red.

      – I like what you’ve done with your hair, says Edith. – The colour, I mean. Or maybe it’s the light in here. Is it?

      Water drips from Coral’s hands, rivulets in the sink.

      – Have a good night, whispers Edith, and she scuppers out the door without washing her hands, her urine-speckled fingers firmly pushing into the middle of the orange poster that trumpets Please Wash Your Hands.

      *

      What I wanted to do with Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall was explore the nature of horror and the uncanny but in a less predictable horror setting. 

      What’s really interesting to me is the notion that at the foundation of the “uncanny” is the familiar made unfamiliar, and that horror isn’t necessarily about big flamboyant moments, but the subtle tweaks to the normal so that the normal becomes less and less recognizable, more destabilized, and the peripheral begins to upstage or even overtake the centre. A university campus as a setting was the ideal place for this kind of writing experiment and exploration because university campuses have so many Gothic tendencies. Classic gothic stories often feature an old building filled with secrets. There are many, many secrets hiding in any university building, no matter how new that building might be. My main character, a stressed out professor named Edith Vane, is preyed upon by her building’s secrets. The building strips away the fragile pretense she has been desperately using to protect herself, and reveals the familiar as creepy, insidious, and maybe even terrifying. 

      Suzette Mayr

      To continue reading, purchase Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall here.


      Suzette Mayr is the author of four previous novels: Monoceros, Moon Honey, The Widows, and Venous Hum. The Widows was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean region, and has been translated into German. Moon Honey was shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Best First Book and Best Novel Awards. Monoceros was longlisted for the Giller Prize. Suzette Mayr lives and works in Calgary.

      Visit Suzette’s website.

      Posted in Guest Authors, Recommended Books | Tagged Canadian author, Canadian literature, CanLit, Coach House Books, DiverseCanLit, Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall, Suzette Mayr, The Authors' Book Club
    • The Spotlight Series: Pillow by Andrew Battershill

      Posted at 11:00 am by TheAuthorsBookClub
      May 13th

      Featuring Coach House Books

      Pillow, the titular character in Andrew Battershill’s Pillow, loves exotic animals, which is why he chooses the zoo for the drug runs he does as a low-level enforcer for a crime syndicate run by André Breton. He doesn’t love his life of crime, but he isn’t cut out for much else, what with all the punches to the head he took as a professional boxer. And now that he’s accidentally but sort of happily knocked up his neighbor, he wants to get out and go straight.

      But first there’s the matter of some stolen coins, possibly in the possession of George Bataille, which leads Pillow on a bizarre caper that involves kidnapping a morphine-addled Antonin Artaud, some corrupt cops, a heavy dose of Surrealism, and a quest to see some giraffes.

      Dive into Pillow by reading the excerpt below followed by Andrew’s comments on the passage.

      *

      The crime syndicate Pillow had swiftly and easily and sadly flowed into after his neurologist had told-not-asked him to retire made a lot of noise and very little money, and was skewed heavily to the crime end of organized crime, rather than the organized side.

      The head of the syndicate was a mid-sized player named André Breton. He and his boys bought and sold drugs, made book, loan-sharked and had started two riots for fun. Breton’s syndicate were mostly recruited from his days as a Marxist firebomber in Paris. They’d done low-level hack terrorist stuff until they caught too much attention and bolted the country for a spot in the superstructure and the cash to pay for pretty paintings. Breton was supposed to be a tastemaker: rich people called him in to tell them what art to buy. He used it as a way to launder money and move bribes.

      Most of the time, the Breton crew hung out and got high, talked about their dreams and played parlour games until Breton gave them something to do. And tonight what Breton had given Pillow and Louise Aragon to do was guard-dog a deal to buy some stolen coins.

      As often happened, Pillow ended up having to wait around outside his apartment, kicking the toe of one shoe with the heel of the other, as he waited for his ride to some place they hadn’t bothered to tell him in advance.

      Most of what Pillow did was watch people exchange money. He’d make collections and stand behind Breton at deals, watching the cash and making sure nobody got out of line. It wasn’t usually to muscle anybody. He was supposed to be a former boxer, violence just an impression he made. The heavy wet work was handled by Breton’s two favourites, Don Costes and Louise Aragon.

      Pillow was in a very minor, but reasonably comfortable, spot in the organization. He knew what he was to them and what he wasn’t: he wasn’t particularly useful but he had uses; he wasn’t exactly trusted but he was liked; he wasn’t going to make much money but he wasn’t going to cost them much either. Plus, he had used to be a celebrity, which is always worth a very sad and very tiny bit.

      After what felt like a long time, Louise Aragon pulled up in a car so old and so black and so heavy it might actually have been a Model T. She screeched to a stop and kicked the huge, steel passenger-side door open. Pillow swung himself into the car and settled in already slumped.

      ‘How do you do, Pillow?’

      Pillow stayed still, suggesting a shrug with just the way he breathed. ‘You have really flexible legs.’

      ‘Thank you, sir. I’ve never stretched a thing. Sometimes one is just a marvel.’

      Pillow nodded evenly, then turned to look at the dark sky framed by black metal through plate glass. He felt the car moving under him, in the way that you can feel things that move faster than your legs carry you and it just feels like sitting down.

      Louise was one of Breton’s go-to people. She was thirty-some- thing and half-sad in that way fun people without a whole lot of luck get. She was the kind of friend Pillow had, which is to say a very friendly acquaintance.

      ‘Do you want to know where we’re going, Pillow?’

      ‘I’m more curious about those legs – you don’t stretch ’em even a little?’ Pillow feinted like he was going to tickle her leg, reached up and snapped her bra strap when she brought her hand down to defend the leg.

      Louise laughed. ‘Bark like the dog you is, Pillow, bark like the dog you is.’

      ‘Does introducing you to your wife buy me any leeway, Louise, huh? I think it gets me a little and I take space where I find it. Space is everywhere, and we need every little, tiny inch of it.’

      Louise flapped her hand like it was a talking human mouth, or possibly a very stupid and hungry bird mouth, then she put both hands back on the wheel and refocused on her incredibly erratic driving.

      Pillow rolled his shoulders back and took to stretching them. His shirt lifted up, and Louise poked his bellybutton. She had her bangs pulled back tight. Her haircut looked like a wave that had been ironed.

      ‘So, just to get it out of the way,’ she said, ‘we’re going to Mad Love. And as always, I am deeply sorry.’

      Mad Love was the bar where a good deal of the money and brain cells Pillow had held on to after fighting had gone to die. It was one of the dingiest places he’d ever seen or smelled or touched. The place, like a lot of things, gave him a headache that would make other people’s headaches jealous.

      ‘Well, that’s a bummer. I guess you should maybe tell me what I’ll be doing there.’

      ‘What you always do, my man: look tall and try not to fall asleep.’ ‘I don’t look tall, I am tall, and I don’t make any promises about sleeping.’

      Louise screeched the car to a stop in an alley that looked like every other alley. ‘Can you at least promise to dream well then?’

      Pillow pulled one long strand of hair loose from her head and let it flop unevenly down the middle of her face. ‘For you, I’ll try.’

      Louise looked at Pillow for an extra second and smiled at him in the way you’d smile at a picture of a really cool building that’s already been torn down.

      *

      My default answer to the question, “What do you hope readers take from this book/passage?” is whatever they want! I’ve always thought that once your book-children go out in the world, they’re full-grown adults. Part of the fun of reading is the freedom to interpret books however you want to, and part of the fun of writing them is seeing what people take away from it. 

      So, sure, my default answer is cop out (a sincere cop out), but in this case I have another one. What I hope people take away from this book, and this passage of the book particularly, is Pillow the character. While this is a novel about a plot to steal a valuable coin from a group of Surrealist poets in a crime gang, what this book is really about is Pillow, a broken down boxing champion looking to find love and take as many trips as he can to the zoo. 

      Fun fact, I initially wanted to call this book You feel me?, and was promptly informed that this is an aggressively terrible name for a book. Pillow, the title, emerged after all the major edits had been done on the manuscript, and, after a long time of having no idea what to call this book, we settled on the final title weirdly quickly, and it just felt right. The longer I worked on this book the more I realized that Pillow, the character, is the emotional heart of the book.

      Andrew Battershill

      To continue reading, purchase Pillow here! 


      Andrew Battershill is a novelist from British Columbia. He was the  co-founder of Dragnet Magazine and the fiction editor of This Magazine. He was the 2017-2018 Writer-in-Residence at the Regina Public Library, and the 2018 Writer in Residence for the City of Richmond. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

      Visit Andrew’s website. Follow him on Twitter.

      Posted in Guest Authors, Recommended Books | Tagged Andrew Battershill, canadian authors, CanLit, Coach House Books, Pillow, The Authors' Book Club
    ← Older posts
    • For up-to-date info, see us on Twitter

      My Tweets
    • Also see us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

      • Instagram
      • Facebook
      • YouTube
    • For a list of Blog Posts, see the tab ‘NEWS, EVENTS, ETC.’

      • The Quotable Dennis Bock
      • Plots & Pandemic: Virtual Meet & Greet with Lee Gowan
      • Catching up with David Albertyn
      • An Interview With Ami Sands Brodoff
      • An Interview With Cathrin Bradbury
  • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • Blog Posts by Month

    • July 2022
    • April 2022
    • January 2022
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • February 2021
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
  • Need this text translated?

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Authors Book Club
    • Join 85 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Authors Book Club
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...