Where in Canada: This Location of Unknown Possibilities

What:This Location of Unknown Possibilities (Now or Never Publishing, 2014)Who:Brett Josef Grubisic’s first novel, The Age of Cities, was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize. He’s the author of Understanding Beryl Bainbridge and co-editor of National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada. He teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.Where in Canada:The author portrays the two film locales of Vancouver and Penticton, BC in a realistic and humorous light. Says Quill & Quire: “Grubisic does an excellent job positioning Marta, the film’s consultant, as an outsider encountering the film industry through wide, watery eyes. But she’s a competent and valuable outsider, soon undertaking a much larger role on the film and catching the attention of one of the studio executives, Jake Nugent. This Location of Unknown Possibilities is Jake’s story almost as much as it is Marta’s; at the outset he is as cynical and inured to the realities of the industry as Marta is new to them, but gradually they seem to trade places. As the film, the narrative, and the characters spiral further out of control, the book gets darker, stranger, and funnier. By the time the film has wrapped, it has morphed into something utterly different, and the novel’s own narrative has mutated, twisted, and slipped its bonds. When the book goes off the rails it is shattering and glorious – just as shattering and glorious as the lives we pretend we’re the authors of.”