How can you resist a 35% discount on acclaimed fiction by great Canadian writers? We're not the only ones to say these books are amazing, as you'll see below. Head over to the Members' Lounge to grab yourself one or all of these ridiculously priced beauties while you can.
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Pulpy and Midge, by Jessica Westhead (Coach House Books)
What It's About
Brian Lembeck – ‘Pulpy’ – takes life slow and steady. He likes his office job, and he likes his gentle, figurine-collecting boss, Al. He even likes the bitter receptionist, though he’s the only one who does. He likes his wife, Midge, too, and their ice-dancing lessons. Midge works as a candle-party hostess – she quit her office job when Al’s dog ate her pet pigeon and Al promised Pulpy a promotion.
But when Al retires and the tyrannical Dan takes over, the promotion vanishes. And then Dan’s oversexed wife, Beatrice, takes a shine to Pulpy, and Dan starts to think Midge is one hot tamale. Soon, the receptionist is smitten with Pulpy, Midge can’t get rid of Dan and Beatrice, and Pulpy’s job is in jeopardy. For once, Pulpy just might have to take a stand.
Reviews
"Westhead may have a claim to being CanLit’s Woody Allen.”—Quill & Quire
"Westhead is adept at providing caustically funny snapshots of lives that are twisted by loss, loneliness or boredom.”—National Post
“The narrative tone of voice is deftly comic ... but the settings and situations are emphatic about the gnawing difference between one’s high expectations for life and what actually comes to be.”—Vancouver Sun
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All My Friends Are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman (Coach House Books)
What It's About
All Tom's friends really are superheroes. There's the Ear, the Spooner, the Impossible Man. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, the Perfectionist was hypnotized (by ex-boyfriend Hypno, of course) to believe that Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, she's sure that Tom has abandoned her. So she's moving to Vancouver. She'll use her superpower to make Vancouver perfect and leave all the heartbreak in Toronto. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards an airplane. Tom has until the wheels touch the ground in Vancouver to convince her he's visible, or he loses her forever.
Reviews
"All My Friends Are Superheroes is a breeze to read, as quick of wit and light on its feet as Spider-Man."—Quill & Quire
"Now with green type and gorgeous illustrations by Tom Percival, the 10th-anniversary edition of Kaufman’s acclaimed love letter to Toronto, All My Friends Are Superheroes, has never been better."—The Coast
'Simply brilliant. A real gem of a book...this ode to love was built to last."—The Bookseller
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The Big Why, by Michael Winter (House of Anansi Press)
What It's About
In 1914, the American artist Rockwell Kent escapes his bustling life in New York City for the quaint, rural town of Brigus, Newfoundland. He has been drawn north by the picturesque landscape of the Atlantic, seeking a simpler, quieter life. Always fascinated and inspired by cold climates, Kent imagines his new home to be a utopia and the perfect place to work on his art and marriage.
Notorious for his flighty relationships with various women and his radical, socialist thinking, the artist’s beliefs and way of life run drastically against those of the community. And on the cusp of the First World War, tensions and suspicions run high; a newcomer could be anyone, including a German spy.
In this fictionalized memoir, Winter explores the life of an artist who was not fully understood or accepted in his time and place. Funny, surprising, and thoroughly honest about our desires and contradictions,The Big Whybares all.
Featuring a new introduction by Patrick deWitt, award-winning author of The Sisters Brothers and Undermajordomo Minor.
Reviews
"Matthew Arnold once praised English literature for being the most "moral," by which he meant that it addressed the question of how we should live. Winter's novel is, in this sense, a refreshingly moral book. It makes you wonder why contemporary novels so rarely take on that question."—The New York Times
"A highly entertaining and ultimately profound novel of a quixotic man who reveres nature’s awful beauty."—Kirkus Reviews
"Make no mistake, The Big Why is the work of a powerful talent, one of the best – and most distinctive – younger writers on the Canadian scene. The novel is a page-turner, not because of its plot, but because of its clarity and richness of its voice."—Quill & Quire
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The Clay Girl, by Heather Tucker (ECW Press)
What It's About
Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes.
Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls. But Mary and her partner, Nia, offer an unexpected refuge to Ari and her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse.
Yet the respite does not last, and Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather, Len, and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she’s severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin.
Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions, testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. Ari spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.
The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force about a child sculpted by kindness, cruelty, and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families — the one she’s born in to and the one she creates.
Reviews
“Tucker’s triumphant debut novel is the story of a childhood lost, a family found, and a coming-of-age, recounted in precise and poetic language. . . It is at times difficult to read, but this novel is worth every moment of pain and every tear.” —Publishers Weekly, starred
“Ari Appleton will take your breath away. . . Astonishingly exquisite debut novel. . . Author Tucker’s prose is as lyrical and powerful as the ocean, Ari’s voice as sure and strong as a rudder through wild seas ... Her rare gift of showing us beauty, hope and humour amid profound trauma make The Clay Girl an extraordinary debut novel.” —Toronto Star
“A tribute to the power of a child’s imagination, The Clay Girl evokes the 60s era of sex and drugs in powerful, poetic prose in what could be the debut novel of the year.” — NOW Toronto
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Sandra Beck, by John Lavery (House of Anansi Press)
No writer in Canada today is more in love with the English, and French, languages than John Lavery. That love is gloriously requited. In inventive, incantatory prose,Sandra Beck, his long-awaited first novel, paints a very unusual portrait of a lady. This is a book about many things: the struggling antics of adolescence, the banal delusions of solitude, the city of Montreal. But it is, above all, a deeply moving tribute to a woman who is both present and absent on every page.
Who is Sandra Beck? She is a mother, a wife, a musician, a manager; but, too, she is the ghost in the seat behind us, always just outside the edges of easy description. Her story is told in the voices of others - namely, her daughter, the wordstruck and lovestruck Josee and her husband, the police chief and TV personality P. F. Bastarache. In a book that embraces paradox and defies the expected limits of what a novel can do, language is at once a gleeful celebration and a crutch, a trick. Despite their keen investigative powers, the "testimony" of Josee and her father is often untrustworthy, even contradictory: self-interest hobbles their understanding. Sandra herself becomes a crutch for them both - a crutch they must learn to live without.
Reviews
"Sandra Beck is a novel that emerges from the particular language and geography of a specific place, and the enormous talent and skill of a gifted author. It is a pleasure and a marvel."—The Globe and Mail
"Most of the time Sandra Beck feels like music. Lavery swings us along with the master’s sure touch and it is always a pleasure to swing right along with him...every page of Sandra Beck is a delightful surprise."—January Magazine
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Fruit, by Brian Francis (ECW Press)
What It's About
Thirteen-year-old Peter Paddington is overweight, the subject of his classmates' ridicule, and the victim of too many bad movie-of-the-week storylines. When his nipples begin speaking to him one day and inform him of their diabolical plan to expose his secret desires, Peter finds himself cornered in a world that seems to have no tolerance for difference. Peter's only solace is "The Bedtime Movies" - perfect-world fantasies that lull him to sleep every night. But when the lines between Peter's fantasies and his reality begin to blur, his hilarious adventures in overeating, family dysfunction, and the terrifying world of sexual awakening really begin.
Reviews
"What a coup for Francis. Fruit is not only a funny, poignant book, it'll give you a whole new view of Sarnia, Ontario."—NOW Magazine
"Without a didactic word, this first novel tells a funny, honest gay coming-of-age story about a boy who finally confronts his secret self."—Booklist
"Sweet, tart and forbidden in all the right places."—Entertainment Weekly