Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be Hugh Garners best, most ambitious novel. Truly, in the person of Grace Hill, the landlady of the Toronto rooming house where most of the books events take place, Garner has created a fictional character never to be forgotten. Grace is a middle-aged snoop and an overweight nudist whose sexual release comes from watching wrestling matches at a hockey arena that is a thinly disguised Maple Leaf Gardens.

Around Grace orbit her various boarders: alcoholic Gordon Lightfoot; Walter Fowler, an aspiring writer whose marriage has just broken up; Aline Garfield, a fundamentalist Christian grappling with various urges and torments; a Polish refugee woman; and a colourful cast of others whose lives intersect in drama that arises from arbitrary or coincidental encounters.

According to scholar John Moss, the book is the best realistic novel of Canadian city life yet to be written.

Hugh Garner (1913-1979) was a Toronto novelist, short story writer and journalist. He published sixteen books during his lifetime, including Hugh Garner's Best Stories , winner of the Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction.
Amy Lavender Harris teaches at York University. She is the author of Imagining Toronto (2010) which was shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in Canadian literary criticism.
The Consulting Editor for Ricochet Books is Brian Busby.

Hugh Garner's profile page

A.F. Moritz has published more than twenty collections of poetry as well as important works of literary history and numerous translations of Latin American verse. A leading figure in the literary life of Canada, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a major award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Two of his most recent works have reaffirmed his reputation: Night Street Repairs (2004) received the ReLit Award and The Sentinel (2008) won both the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Toronto.

George Fetherling's profile page