16 Categories of Desire

By (author): Douglas Glover

Douglas Glover’s collection of stories mezmerizes like no other. A sheer tour-de-force, the collection features eleven new stories that demonstrate that Glover is capable of writing like no other writer. Like a good Beatles album, the collection includes Glover’s best new stories, linked only by the quality of the writing. The stories are wide ranging examples of fine, often comic, writing.

“The Left Ladies Club” is about a man who leaves teaching to become a writer, giving himself licence to live the bohemian life. In Glover’s merciless portrayal, the Ragged Point literary scene consists of the sorriest bunch of excuse-mongering losers you’ll ever encounter.

In “La Corriveau” (ref: the Siren of Quebec who murdered her husband and was later hanged in an iron cage above a crossroads), an Anglo woman awakens to find a dead man (presumably a francophone) in her bed. In a hilarious turn-of-events, the female narrator, who cannot at first even remember the man’s name nor how they happened to share the same bed, conceives of ways to hide the body in plain sight, while narrating the political implications of her circumstances interplayed with details from popular culture and Quebec history. In “Lunar Sensitivities,” a mathematician and a scientist compete for the attention of a beautiful woman; in “Abrupt Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous,” dinosaurs compete for love and life. In both stories, love does everything but triumph. Ranging over time from pre-history to the present, from the American South to the Canadian North, Douglas Glover maps the heart in all its passion, valour, ineptitude, and vulnerability. Occasionally scabrous, horrifically funny, intermittently appalling, and wildly erotic, the stories in this collection bring to life a world in time, irony and desire prevail.

AUTHOR

Douglas Glover

Born in 1948 on a tobacco farm in Ontario, writer and critic Douglas Glover is the author of many works of fiction including Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon (1985). He currently lives and teaches in upper New York State.

Reviews

16 Categories of Desire maps the human heart in all its passion, valour, ineptitude, and vulnerability. These eleven stories are populated by scientists and eccentrics, writers and wastrels, all looking fervently for love in its many guises. Some long for the unattainable; others struggle with the compulsion to destroy love before it�s taken from them. Occasionally scabrous, horrifically funny, intermittently appalling, and wildly erotic, the stories in 16 Categories of Desire bring to life a world in which a screen of irony may be the only defence against fear and loneliness.
“One of the most important Canadian writers of his generation.”
The Toronto Star

“Glover’s style is crisp and precise, his observations chillingly perceptive and satirically biting.”
The Vancouver Sun

“Every sentence and every paragraph pulse with energy… We can read and re-read the stories with pleasure because of that verbal energy, that sense of humour, that sharpness of style and observation — and the occasional moment of genuine pathos.”
The Toronto Star

“Douglas Glover’s 16 Categories of Desire is a book about love and its passions. It is a book that any adult can learn from and maybe understand themselves and perhaps forgive themselves a bit.”
The Library of the Found Inkwell

Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×

Douglas Glover’s collection of stories mezmerizes like no other. A sheer tour-de-force, the collection features eleven new stories that demonstrate that Glover is capable of writing like no other writer. Like a good Beatles album, the collection includes Glover’s best new stories, linked only by the quality of the writing. The stories are wide ranging examples of fine, often comic, writing.

“The Left Ladies Club” is about a man who leaves teaching to become a writer, giving himself licence to live the bohemian life. In Glover’s merciless portrayal, the Ragged Point literary scene consists of the sorriest bunch of excuse-mongering losers you’ll ever encounter.

In “La Corriveau” (ref: the Siren of Quebec who murdered her husband and was later hanged in an iron cage above a crossroads), an Anglo woman awakens to find a dead man (presumably a francophone) in her bed. In a hilarious turn-of-events, the female narrator, who cannot at first even remember the man’s name nor how they happened to share the same bed, conceives of ways to hide the body in plain sight, while narrating the political implications of her circumstances interplayed with details from popular culture and Quebec history. In “Lunar Sensitivities,” a mathematician and a scientist compete for the attention of a beautiful woman; in “Abrupt Extinctions at the End of the Cretaceous,” dinosaurs compete for love and life. In both stories, love does everything but triumph. Ranging over time from pre-history to the present, from the American South to the Canadian North, Douglas Glover maps the heart in all its passion, valour, ineptitude, and vulnerability. Occasionally scabrous, horrifically funny, intermittently appalling, and wildly erotic, the stories in this collection bring to life a world in time, irony and desire prevail.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

186 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 0.6in
260gr

Published:

October 01, 2000

Publisher:

Goose Lane Editions

ISBN:

9780864923141

9780864927866 – EPUB

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Short Stories

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.