Widely praised by critics in Canada and the U.S., shortlisted for the 1994 SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and a City of Toronto Book Award, Minus Time made a stunningly successful publishing debut. Now with the February 2000 release of Catherine Bush’s second novel, The Rules of Engagement (see page 9), and interest from the film community, this is the perfect time for the new PerennialCanada edition of Minus Time.
With surreal lyricism and edgy, deadpan wit, Catherine Bush’s Minus Time traces the desire of a young woman to make a place for herself in a media-mad, toxic-scare-filled world. Helen’s mother is an astronaut trying to set an endurance record in a space station. Her father, a disaster-relief specialist, circles the world saving people from catastrophe. What kind of family is possible when your parents are in constant motion and there’s so much space separating you from them? With risks of disaster all around, how do you dream a future for yourself?
Set in a world where external events aptly mirror the drama of personal relationships, Minus Time offers up a brilliantly observed, deeply moving tale of millennial life, in a voice sliced through with irony and awe.

Catherine Bush is the author of five novels. Her work has been critically acclaimed, published internationally, and shortlisted for numerous awards. Her most recent novel, Blaze Island, was a Globe and Mail and Writers’ Trust of Canada Best Book of the Year, and the Hamilton Reads 2021 Selection. Her other novels include the Canada Reads longlisted Accusation; the Trillium Award shortlisted Claire's Head; the national bestselling The Rules of Engagement, which was also named a New York Times Notable Book and a L.A. Times Best Book of the Year; and Minus Time, shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. The recipient of numerous fellowships, Bush has been Writer-in-Residence/Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich and a Fiction Meets Science Fellow at the HWK in Delmenhorst, Germany. An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Guelph, she lives in Toronto and in an old schoolhouse in Eastern Ontario.

Catherine Bush's profile page