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A young woman has disappeared at the edge of the city. Four women are drawn into the race to find her. As we watch them grid-search the fields for traces of her passing, we move through the shattering events of their recent lives that have left them as lost as she is. Mentor and protégé, lovers and sisters, they explore one burning question: who’s got the power, and what is he or she going to do with it?
Redolent with ambiguity, playing on the multiple meanings of victim, victory, and theatricality while undermining and interrogating these conventions, The Vic creates an ensemble of sharply drawn characters: eight ethnically diverse women, ranging in age from their teens to their fifties, each of them eager to claim the entitlement they feel their status as victim has “naturally” conferred upon them.
Drawing on the cult of Rock Thériault (aka “Moses”) near Burnt River, Ontario, in the early 1980s, and the Bernardo case, The Vic starts out where the popular media coverage of these events leaves off: with the media’s inability to penetrate the humanity of its subjects beyond the constructed veils of saints and sinners; evil perpetrators and innocent, “helpless” victims. It is an unsparing, often shocking, sometimes incredibly humourous dramatization of how the status of victim has become the most powerful and effective manipulative tool for social advancement in an age where all public discourse begins and ends with the populist media motto, “if it bleeds it leads.”
Cast of 8 women.
In The Vicinity David O’Meara gives us a new kind of cityscape, one that brings its unseen, and usually unsung, materials to the foreground. Brick, concrete (that “not-so-silver screen / our walk-on parts are posed upon”), glass, steel, wire: they step boldly from anonymity into fresh focus, backdrops goaded into stardom. Full of casually-worn wit and humour, often using intricate forms that deftly reflect their subjects, these poems probe our conventional attitudes while walking us down present or remembered streets – “Some-such Avenue / Rue Saint Whatever.” – See more at: http://www.brickbooks.ca/?page_id=3&bookid=149#sthash.mWW5Wuo0.dpuf
Set in Jewish London in the 1930s, Susan Glickman’s The Violin Lover is written against the backdrop of Hitler’s escalating campaign against the Jews. This beautifully written novel tells the story of Clara Weiss and Ned Abraham, “the violin lover,” brought together by Clara’s 11-year-old son, Jacob. A successful doctor and amateur violinist, Ned is pressured to practice a duet with Jacob by the boy’s piano teacher. Though reluctant at first, Ned is charmed by the young prodigy and surprised by Jacob’s dedication and passion for music. In him Ned sees his younger self, so young and full of promise. A friendship is soon built on a mutual love for music. A dinner invitation to spend Passover with the Weiss family seals Ned’s fate and a clandestine love affair begins. Although they both agree that no one must ever know — especially not Clara’s family — their affair inevitably comes to a crashing end, with disastrous, life-altering consequences.
Unfolding like a melody, The Violin Lover is infused with music and told in three voices. It is a powerful novel about the love one feels for family, friends, culture, faith and music, and the passion that comes with it — regardless of the outcome.
Fifteen-year-old Bess has no idea when she heads to London to see her Uncle Ted that she is about to find herself at the heart of a scandal involving sexual impropriety; her stepfather, Thom; and an attempted overthrow of the government. What does all this have to do with her? How adroitly can Bess manoeuvre through a series of interviews to avoid being swept up in the peril that might ensue? And will she be able to spin the facts to create a myth based on her own innocence?
In this gripping follow-up to The Last Wife, Kate Hennig continues her Tudor Queens Trilogy by cleverly exploring victim shaming, sexual consent, and the extraordinary ability of girls becoming women as she reimagines the scandalous and little-known story of Elizabeth the First before she was Queen.
This volume includes work selected from each of Phyllis Webb’s books of poetry published prior to 1982, including: Trio, Even Your Right Eye, The Sea Is Also a Garden, Naked Poems, Selected Poems 1954-1965, Wilson’s Bowl, Sunday Water, Thirteen Anti Ghazals and Talking.
For more than three decades, Robert Lepage’s dynamic multimedia performance works have been produced on stages worldwide. Celebrated for his bold, visionary aesthetic, Lepage has received several high-profile commissions in recent years, including two Peter Gabriel world tours, Cirque du Soleil’s KÁ in Las Vegas, a dramatic staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and Lorin Maazel’s 1984 at London’s Royal Opera House.
Despite Lepage’s prolificacy, and his status as one of the pioneers of new media performance, little critical writing about his work has been published, particularly in English. Ludovic Fouquet’s The Visual Laboratory of Robert Lepage, translated for the first time into English, thus presents much-needed in-depth analysis of Lepage’s strategies and practices.
The book’s title references the experimentation so integral to Lepage’s creative process and the ways in which he and his creative arts company, Ex Machina, have always been attuned to the synergistic possibilities that emerge when art encounters science and technology. Whether as a playwright, actor, film director, or stage director, Lepage is forever in search of new mutations of form and expression, and his unexpected narratives often write themselves out of discoveries he makes when staging a piece – indeed stagecraft often guides story in Lepage’s creative realm.
This full-colour volume will be of keen interest for theatre practitioners of all kinds, from set designers to directors, from academics to fans.
These poems peel back the layers of suburban life and the American Dream. Vivian Maier was a self-taught street photographer who worked as a nanny for wealthy employers in New York and Chicago. The poet imagines her as a documentarian who is compassionate, abrasive, and meditative, while her subjects provide their own narrative. More than anything, the poems are a response to her work, which is all we have that comes directly from her. It is a deliberate challenge to the “mystery nanny” she is reduced to in much of the constructed narrative of her life.
If you’re like most people on the planet, the natural, creative energy you were born with has become trapped within as you constantly strive to meet family, social, and work expectations. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Bob McCulloch and Julia Gluck, veteran coaches and motivators, show you how to liberate your natural energy. Using many real-life stories, they walk you through these proven, powerful practices: A – awareness: staying mindfully aware of self and others, capturing and cherishing your lightness, and being thoughtfully authentic; E – engagement: getting and staying personally engaged, staying resolved without attachment, and accepting and supporting your mutuality with others; O – openness: accepting every idea’s inevitable relevance, allowing and fully appreciating fresh associations, and perceiving the positives in every idea that comes your way;and, U – understanding: acknowledging and suspending judgment, confirming your understanding, and embracing the power of the both/and. And they show how all of these practices are orchestrated by, I – integrity, as your Thoughtful I helps you intervene between your emotions and responses.
Fintan O’Neill’s no hero. There’s not a lot of money in 17th century Ireland, but the likeable, withdrawn 15-year-old’s the poorest kid in Waterford, living on a small tenant farm with a tough cynical mother, forced to do what she’s had to for her and her boy to survive. The sudden arrival of Fintan’s older cousin Ruari, an ex-soldier with a troubled past, has turned Fintan’s world upside down. Appointing himself a stand in father figure, Ruari leads Fintan into a world of vice and violence. But Fintan never thought an evening pub venture would end up in Ruari’s death. And he absolutely never counted on Ruari dumping a strange-looking coin into his lap with a dying request to return it to its original owner.
A CNQ Editors’ Book of the Year
Does faith insist upon the spotless soul? Can intellectual integrity and an honest search for the holy in this world survive a collision with religious mania? Is heavenly forgiveness possible this side of the River Styx? In this boisterous, witty, manically paced novel, Maggie Prentice is resolved to find out, even if it costs her everything.
A true original, capable of brilliant verbal contortions, Maggie Prentice won’t give up. Haunted by her past, chafing under the tutelage of her born-again, cult-figure brother, coping with the double devils of alcoholism and disconnectedness, she is pursued by the Tanteek, an armchair prankster out of a Dylan song that incarnates her questions, uncertainties, and fears, and dogs her every move. In her wild, over-the-top, yet eerily familiar universe, Maggie is forced to confront life’s big questions — faith, fear, love, and death — does life have meaning?
In this daring, intelligent, whip-smart debut novel, Jane Woods has created unforgettable characters that live in what might be an alternate reality. She has also written a captivating, deeply affective story that grabs the reader and won’t let go.
The Walled Garden is a unique collection of short essays addressing a wide variety of subjects. From an exploration of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini to an update on the linguistic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, from a look into the true nature of time and the present moment to a discussion of ‘psychic birthplaces’, from reflections on Paleolithic caves, poetry and art, The Walled Garden includes the wild, the tamed and the stunningly unusual.
The Walnut Tree tells the story of the intense journey of SŸssel, a young, privileged Jewish woman who grows up in Chernowitz, studies in Prague and Paris, endures the horrors of World War II in Eastern Europe, and ultimately escapes to the peace and promise of a new life in Saskatoon. The character of the older SŸssel looks back at her life, accompanied by her alter ego, a Musician, who performs on a grand piano. This powerful, disturbing, and transcendent dramaÊsets the devastating power of historical events against the personal forces of reconciliation. The Walnut Tree deals with vital social, political, and ethical issues, and finallyÑand most importantlyÑwith enduring love.
As the Soviet army invades Afghanistan, Aman and Mariam flee to Canada in hopes of putting an ocean between themselves and the daily horrors of war. A championship chess player in Kabul, Aman finds himself working in a pizzeria just to get by. Their fresh start continues to prove difficult as they navigate the trauma and displacement that follows them at every turn, and when their son Roshan is born, their curse of displacement is passed on to the next generation. The family’s only hope for a peaceful future might be Mariam’s past, as her family mythology becomes a source of power. Is her love strong enough to keep Aman and Roshan from destroying themselves or each other?
In this new edition of Alden Nowlan’s poignant first novel, published posthumously in 1988, a boy growing up in a small Nova Scotia mill town is abandoned by the young mother he adores. Family relationships, sexual confusions, and the pains of love are rendered with deep and authentic feeling. This is an essential book for all readers who have admired the work of this major Canadian writer.
In The War as I Saw It, George Makonese Matuvi invites us into the world of a young boy living through a war he doesn’t understand. As violence drives his family from their home in the mountains to the streets of Zimbabwe’s towns and then cities, the author shares his family’s story with honesty, composure and a touch of humour. Interspersed within this tale of flight, hardship and the eventual return to rebuild, Matuvi shares stories of his life as a child, from making soccer balls out of discarded plastic bags to the tales his father told around the fire at night, adding depth and joy to his portrait of a family struggling with displacement. The War as I Saw It is not a tragedy, though there were many tragedies during the war, it is a story of love, of strength in difficulty and of the ingenuity of one family as they cope with forces beyond their control.