After Alice
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2014
- Category
- Historical, Literary, Family Life
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781927063460
- Publish Date
- Apr 2014
- List Price
- $19.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781927063477
- Publish Date
- Apr 2014
- List Price
- $11.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
After retiring from the heady world of academia, Sidonie von Täler has returned to the small Okanagan Valley town she escaped in her youth for the lights of the big city. The family orchard has since gone to seed, and ever decades later Sidonie still finds herself living in the shadow of her deceased older sister Alice.
As she gets down to work sifting through the detritus of her family’s legacy, Sidonie is haunted by memories of trauma and triumph in equal measure, and must reconcile past and present while reconnecting with the family members she has left.
Karen Hofmann’s debut novel blends a poetic sensibility with issues of land stewardship, social stratification and colonialism, painting the geological and historical landscape of the Okanagan in vivid and varied colours.
About the author
Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley and taught creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, for many years. She now divides her time between Vancouver Island and the BC Interior. A first collection of poetry, Water Strider, was published by Frontenac House in 2008 and shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. Her first novel, After Alice, was published by NeWest Press in 2014, and a second novel, What is Going to Happen Next, in 2017. Her short fiction has won the Okanagan Fiction Contest three times, and "The Burgess Shale" was shortlisted at the 2012 CBC Short Fiction Contest. Karen Hofmann is an avid walker, and her writing explores the landscapes, both rural and urban, of British Columbia as well as the personalities and social dynamics of the inhabitants. Her latest novel, A Brief View from the Coastal Suite, was released in spring 2021.
www.karenhofmann.com
Excerpt: After Alice (by (author) Karen Hofmann)
STYX
The 5:40 from Calgary, descending to the runway a kilometre to the south, rattles her roof and screams, all throat and flash, over the little frozen lake. Explosions of scarlet and green light track down the lake, pulse through the ice. The leafless aspens flare silver, copper, and are reabsorbed into darkness. The jet’s scream drops an octave, glissando. A spectacle of dragons, a kind of Valkyrie ride.
It’s her signal to close her laptop, abandon her work for the day. She stretches and blinks, tumbles from the tight interlocking puzzle of her mental work, of her reading and writing, into the jet’s destruction of silence, into the late afternoon of her empty house, as some component might peel from a shuttle and spin out into the void.
She had not thought, signing the papers for the house purchase, about the runway. Had not thought—entranced by the house, which in August had been full of light and space; entranced by the green and breeziness of the valley, a long slip of light, air, shade, and Montreal sultry and crowded; entranced by the real estate agent’s phrases: deer, ducks, lake path—she had not thought. She had seen only the lake, sparkling; the bobbing waterfowl.
She had forgotten how, even as a child, she had thought this area a bleak pinch of the landscape, a dark and dismal passage. The hills in this stretch of the valley low, blocky, not pleasing. A sort of rocky knob, just to the south and west of the lake, scattered now with dead and dying pines, blocking the light, the sun setting behind it by early afternoon. The least desirable land in the whole of the valley.
Reserve land, of course: what was given back to the original inhabitants as least valuable. Rocky, boggy land; the little lake, shallow and muddy, an afterthought in a valley famous for its lakes. Given back in treaties, this unprepossessing twist of the valley. A shameful illiberality. And now she has bought a house here, a bargain because on leased land.
Editorial Reviews
"I welcome Hofmann’s refreshing voice with this wonderful book, one of the most interesting and exciting that I’ve encountered in ages."
~ Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
"For the beauty of its narrative descriptions, but also for many other reasons, After Alice deserves a place among the best of new Canadian literary fiction."
~ Julienne Isaacs, The Winnipeg Review
"This novel accomplishes so much … After Alice firmly places [Hofmann] as an exciting new voice on the CanLit scene."
~ Kat Main, Alberta Views
"After Alice has the makings of a CanLit classic, with complex characters, heavy themes done with a light touch, and expert pacing. Did I mention that this is Karen Hofmann’s first novel?"
~ Laura Frey, Reading in Bed
