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The Comedian’s Book of the Dead
$24.95A profound and imaginative underworld quest, and a fresh, funny page turner, from one of Canada’s most beloved and awarded storytellers.
Death is a comedian and devoted family man, but everything falls apart when the Fates choose him to guide departed souls to the Beneath. Having to perform this new role erodes his humanity and causes him to do some perhaps unforgivable things, and when his only son dies by suicide, Death realizes he’s likely the one to blame.
Attempting the impossible, Death goes into the Beneath to beg the Fates to allow him to bring back his son. Naturally, things are not what they seem, and Death is forced to reevaluate everything he knows— everything except the deep love he has for his child. Blending Barwin’s celebrated wit with deeply moving scenes of empathy and compassion, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead is a heartbreaking and humorous journey into the joy and pain of parenthood, and a thoughtful exploration of choice and agency, sacrifice and love.
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The Comic
$20.00A bored part-time college English instructor who teaches a class called “Humour in Classical Novels” to students who really don’t care decides to try his hand at stand-up comedy, which takes him from his very protected academic world into an arena open to attack and persecution by his family, the public at large, the media and the courts. The novel explores issues such as political correctness/cultural sensitivity, personal and private space and social media, freedom of speech, huckster media, the notion of originality and most especially the nature of humour itself — what makes something funny, what subjects are taboo and why, what causes certain jokes to lose favour, how does context affect what can or cannot be said. To further this approach, he takes the name Bruce Leonard and dresses a là TVs Columbo. On his downward spiral, the man meets some wild characters: a female stand-up comic who tends to mirror his routine and voyage, a prosecuting lawyer who uses court cases to promote her other role as author
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The Commons
$17.95Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, most of the English common lands were enclosed—taken, by force, out of the hands of local collective use and privatized. The resistance to capitalism’s “primitive accumulation,” registered in recurring peasant revolts, failed to stem this tide of what we now call “privatization”—but it spilt over into Romanticism’s own advocacy of a kind of literary commons. Underground in “the literary” since the nineteenth century, the fight against enclosure resurfaces today amidst continuing capitalist accumulations and a renascent sense of the commons under globalization.
In The Commons we wander the English countryside with the so-called mad peasant poet John Clare, just escaped from an Essex asylum and walking the more than eighty miles to his home in Helpston; we pick wild fruit with anarchist Henry David Thoreau, also newly escaped from jail (for not paying his poll tax); and we comb the English Lake District, undermining William Wordsworth’s proprietary claim upon it, with a host of authors of Romantic Guides and Tours.
Resisting enclosure with each word, tearing down (intellectual) property’s fencing, wandering in search of new commons, new spaces outside property’s exclusive and excluding domain—The Commons veers in and out of history to find spaces of linguistic hope. What we have named, in less inspired moments, “allusion,” “borrowing,” or even (pretentiously) “intertextuality” is just this fact that poetry proves again and again: our languages are common. Shared. Un-enclosable.
The Commons is another installment of what Collis has called (half in jest) “The Barricades Project”—a broadly based, historically ranging test of the old adage that “poetry is the revolutionary act par excellence.” It includes Anarchive (2005) and will eventually continue in The Red Album. The Commons includes an introduction to “The Barricades Project,” written by Collis’ collaborators Alfred Noyes and Ramon Fernandez.
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The Compassionate Imagination
$19.95“The book is worth reading because it does something rather special: it celebrates Canadian arts and offers ideas to promote their continued cultivation. Wyman’s … enthusiasm for the variety and calibre of projects is infectious.” — The Literary Review of Canada
A radical reimagining of the role of art and culture in contemporary democracy, The Compassionate Imagination proposes a new Canadian Cultural Contract that re-humanizes our way of living together by tapping into the instincts for generosity and compassion that find their expression in art.
Over the last forty years, the arts have been increasingly deemed unimportant to the creation of an educated workforce. Reflecting a broadly held political view that in a market-based economy the arts were “a frill,” they were deemed “unnecessary” courses compared to sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
But what kind of Canada might we make if we were to place art and culture at the heart of our mutual decision-making, and return the arts to a central position in our education, shifting to steam rather than stem?
What might be possible if we integrate the creative imagination into our responses to the great social challenges we face? What impact would it have on the future shape of our democracy?
It’s time to find where the Compassionate Imagination can take us.
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The Complaints Department
$27.95Gaspereau Press is pleased to present this redesigned edition of Susan Haley’s fifth novel, The Complaints Department, first published in 2000. The novel takes place in the village of Prohibition Creek, a fictional Dene community in the Northwest Territories. We first encounter Robert Woodcutter on the steps of the local Band hall, having just lost to his brother Danny in the election for chief. When Danny begins to outline his plans for improving local affairs, Robert points out a hole in his list of committees. And so the local complaints department is born, with Robert Woodcutter as its sole administrator and attorney.
The novel centres on the Woodcutter family and on the relationship that develops between Robert and Rebecca McCrae, whose allegiances gradually shift, from a defense of her position in Danny’s band office, to Robert’s way of doing things. Like many others in the novel, Robert and Rebecca’s relationship hinges on the town’s transitional status, as the last of the old ways are steadfastly maintained alongside a newer, non-traditional approach.
Issues of governance and authority lurk around every corner in Prohibition Creek. When Robert’s wife tells him to leave, he and his friend Haga (the town fool) reclaim an abandoned fish plant. Before long they are deep in the paper chase required just to build an outhouse. Haley delights in these kinds of absurdities, capturing their inanity, and detailing the labyrinth of shortcuts and forgeries that have long characterized the attempts of national bureaucracy to replace local systems.
The Complaints Department features an unruly crew of family and local curiosities, including Robert’s mother Ama and her boyfriend Elvis, Rebecca’s uncle Herod, Danny’s dissatisfied wife Roseanne, and Robert’s own wife, the sullen but capable Mary Ann. Haley demonstrates a genuine understanding of life in Canada’s northern populations, and an appreciation for the range of archetypes recognizable in all communities of certain size.
Prohibition Creek is a place where magic, dreams, visions and storytelling permeate everyday life, but where these forms of guidance are increasingly being driven under by a kind of power that operates from the top down. Ever evasive of authority, Robert instead relies on stories he once found in a little green book in the school library, a volume of knowledge he takes to calling “The Book of Dene.” Drawing strength from storytelling and from his occasional participation in the ways of life still maintained by his mother’s generation, Robert works to rebuild the relationships upon which his place in Prohibition Creek depend.
This edition is a smyth-sewn paperback bound in a letterpress-printed cover. The text was typeset in Adobe Jenson by Andrew Steeves and printed offset on laid paper.
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The Complete Lockpick Pornography
$14.95Now in one volume, Lockpick Pornography and its thematic sequel, We all Got it Coming
Lockpick Pornography is a genderqueer adventure story, and We All Got It Coming is about a young couple dealing with the aftermath of an act of violence. From kidnapping the son of a “family values” politician in Lockpick Pornography to the violent confrontation of We All Got It Coming, these are characters who fight back.
Comeau explores the effects of prejudice and the ramifications of violence with his signature mix of unhinged humour and unexpected tenderness.
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The Conception of Winter
$12.95Powerful yet serene, The Conception of Winter is about women, their friendships, loyalties, and pain. But most of all it about physical, mental, and spiritual healing.
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The Concise Kochel
$15.95The Concise Köchel cannot be substituted for the “Complete” catalogue. Published in response to the many requests from musicologists and musicians received by the publishers Breitkopf and Hartel, this abridged, less costly and easier to handle edition is designed to meet the most frequent needs of those interested in the works of Mozart.
—From the Introduction
It’s All Hallows’ Eve, and the Motherwell sisters, Lili and Cecile, have invited their musicologist patrons, the Brunswick sisters, to attend them on this crucial day. All their lives, Lili and Cecile have practiced on their pianos, to the exclusion of everything else. Their interpretations of Mozart, as the impresario Mendel says, are “too impeccable, too irreproachable,” there is “too much politeness, too much purity, not enough passion.”
They wish to discuss something hidden in their basement—someone has strayed from their score, someone has improvised, the hands of the clock need to be turned back.
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The Confederation Poets
$25.00The Confederation Poets: The Founding of a Canadian Poetry, 1880 to the First World War is a study of poets born between 1850 and 1866, focusing on the work they produced up until the end of World War I. Through this investigation, the climate of opinion that animated Canadian society following Confederation is brought to light. Poets covered range from the famous (Lampman, Roberts, Crawford, Carman) to the less well-known, but still important (Cameron, Herbin, Coleman, Wetherald). 55 Confederation poems, many hard to find today, are quoted in full.
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The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard
$25.00The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard is a contemporary story of obsessive love, sexual transgression and tragic loss. Bachelor and professional accountant Joseph Blanchard has led a socially active though emotionally cautious life into his late thirties. When he discovers that his beautiful nineteen-year-old cousin Sophie, a talented concert pianist, is in love with him, he finds he is helpless to resist her youthful charms, and against his better judgment embarks upon a passionate affair. As a safeguard against causing pain to her parents, the two lovers conspire to keep their relationship secret. For a while they are happy. But Sophie’s performing career compels her to spend time in the company of other musicians, many of them young men. Consumed by jealousy, Joseph allows rage to seize control, with tragic results. Grieving, he sets about to destroy all evidence of the affair. But when a family secret is exposed, it reveals the past in a new light. In the end, his health in decline and with nothing left but memories, he discloses his secret to a confidant.
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The Conjoined
$18.95Longlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award
A masterful and gripping novel from “an undeniably talented writer” — Globe and Mail
On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother’s belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery — two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother’s chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng — troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver’s Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away.
As Jessica learns more about Casey, Jamie, and their troubled immigrant Chinese parents, she also unearths dark stories about Donna, whom she had always thought of as the perfect mother. The complicated truths she uncovers force her to take stock of own life.
Moving between present and past, this riveting novel unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism and traces the often-hidden fractures that divide our diverse cities.
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The Convict Lover
$22.95A new edition of the beloved and bestselling classic work of creative nonfiction
It is 1919. Joseph Cleroux, a handsome young man who escaped the Great War and the flu epidemic, is incarcerated in Kingston Penitentiary, determined that jail will not break him. Phyllis Halliday is a 17-year-old schoolgirl who finds his letter in the quarry where he is doing hard time. As “Peggy” and “Dady-Long-Legs,” they exchange a clandestine correspondence that frees them both from the confines of their lives, although the risk entailed increases as Joseph asks more and more of Phyllis and conditions inside Canada’s most notorious prison deteriorate.
Based on letters the author found in the attic of her home, The Convict Lover is a blend of historical detective work and imaginative recreation — a haunting, unforgettable journey through the world of Canada’s first and oldest penitentiary and portrait of the people who lived in its shadow, both inside and outside its walls. Played out against the backdrop of a war-scarred society, a vicious battle for penitentiary reform, and the first riot in Canada’s prison history, The Convict Lover is a story of human resilience and desire.
This edition includes a new introduction and epilogue.
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The Corner Shop
$9.50World-renowned cartoonist Seth returns with three new ghost stories for 2022.
Peter Wood enters a charming antiques shop owned by two young women one stormy evening. But after he returns a second time to a strange old man and a far gloomier atmosphere, and leaves with an unusual jade frog, Peter soon discovers that his purchase was worth more than he paid.
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The Coronation Voyage
$17.95May 1953. The Empress of France sets sail from Montreal. On the pretext of attending the celebrations marking the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, an important mafioso leaves for England where he secretly plans to live in exile with his two sons. Aboard this floating palace in the middle of the ocean, the petty lord of the Montreal underworld must face the most important decision of his dubious career: will he sacrifice his youngest son for a safe-conduct?
Le Voyage du couronnement, co-produced by Theatre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal and Théatre du Trident in Québec City, was nominated in the Best New Play category at the 1996 ‘Soirée des Masques’ presented by the Académie québécoise du théatre.
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the correct fury of your why is a mountain
$20.00Poet-critic Jim Johnstone has described Kevin Heslop’s the correct fury of your why is a mountain as among “the most promising poetic projects to come out of Canada in recent years.” This debut collection communicates Heslop’s sense of balance as a visual artist, curator, and poet who weights the page with visual harmony. By turns experiment, lyric, and incantation, the book nods to its author’s training as an actor, combining a command of language, form, character, and polyphony to make something performatively unique.
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The Cottage, the Spider Brooch, and the Second Wife
$19.95This is the story of Alfred Hilroy, a recently widowed, 68-year-old man who believes that estate and money matters should be kept private. It is also the story of Alfred’s three grown children, Bev, Michael, and Judy, who love their father dearly but worry that he is going to squander away his retirement savings — and their inheritance. Alfred believes his affairs are in order. He has part-time work at the pharmacy he co-owns and runs, reasonably good health, and a modest but steady amount of retirement income. However, he misses his late wife terribly and does not look forward to navigating through old age alone. Then “The Bolt” hits. Mary Beth Cain, twenty-five years Alfred’s junior, is an athletic, confident, outgoing woman who knows what she wants. Within weeks there is talk of a future life together. Bev, Michael, and Judy are soon swept up into a sea of conflicting emotions as their new step-mother moves into — and redecorates — the beloved Hilroy home, appears at Alfred’s birthday party wearing their late mother’s spider brooch, and vacations with the family at the cottage. Will Alfred leave everything to this newcomer to the family? Will cherished family belongings suddenly disappear? The Hilroys’ struggles are becoming more and more common as baby boomers confront their parents’, and their own, mortality. As Bev, Michael, and Judy screw up their courage and begin discussions with their father about his estate, we learn about, Powers of Attorney, capital gains tax, probating a will, US estate and gift tax, trusts, joint ownership, cottage inheritances, communicating with aging people, and more — all in an intriguing, suspenseful, and ultimately liberating story.