A risqué autobiographical novel that fictionalizes the sexual adventures of the author’s younger days

In 2012, acclaimed writer George Bowering published Pinboy, a fictional memoir of his teenage sexual awakening. With No One, Bowering returns to play with form and fact in this autobiographical novel that continues the narrator’s journey in a quest story full of further sexual awakenings as that Pinboy becomes a man.

A writer called “alert, playful, and questioning” by The Globe and Mail, Bowering infuses this work with sexual politics, romantic and social developments, and a backdrop of ancient themes of homesickness and captivity. Readers may delight in the details of the retelling or perhaps they will be browned off. There are no guarantees. The ending will be a pleasant surprise for readers, patient and otherwise.

George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate, was born in the Okanagan Valley.After serving as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Bowering earned a BA in English and an MA in history at the University of British Columbia, where he became one of the co-founders of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. He has taught literature at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario, and Simon Fraser University, and he continues to act as a Canadian literary ambassador at international conferences and readings.A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian, and tireless supporter of fellow writers, Bowering has authored more than eighty books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography, and youth fiction. His writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and Romanian.Bowering has twice won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s top literary prize. In 2019 he received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.

George Bowering's profile page

“Bowering has always been an elusive writer. No One turns that into virtue that lifts its pages above the confessional and prurient to a unique sort of discretion that contradictorily enables an exquisite and utterly surprising retelling of marriage’s most ancient story: the soul’s search for home. If anyone has ever doubted that Bowering is a serious and courageous writer, this book will put an end to doubt. No One is one of those books that readers are foolish to judge until the last page has been read.” – Brian Fawcett, author of Virtual Clearcut

“I highly recommend reading the latest of Mr. Bowering’s long list of publications. No One follows up on George’s Pin Boy and continues his character’s saga into adulthood. Yes, there is sex and lots of it, and hilarity, but there is also pathos, and pain. And the ending is delicious! I believe this writing is George Bowering at the top of his game! – Lee Trentadue, Galiano Island Books