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Tunnel Island

By (author): Bill Gaston

Set on an island in BC’s Salish Sea, a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Bill Gaston, a master of the art of short fiction.

Eleven stories feature a cast of characters striving to overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error. On Tunnel Island, moral misjudgments, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound as characters seek a remedy for what ails them: loneliness, heartbreak, grief.

Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the estates of absent owners, until he takes a lover’s bad advice and rents their houses through Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry Wiccan sense of humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner — in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy at their door. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony.

Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston’s bighearted vision of life on a heavily forested island immerses readers in a world rendered tender and tolerable by human folly and our stumbling attempts at redemption.

Reviews

Past Praise Gaston is that rare writer who can peel back the deepest fears of Nature abandonment pain futility and find a vision of vehement imperfect beauty Publishers Weekly

Bill Gastons stories are as multifaceted and generous as the complicated alltooreal characters at their heart This is a wonderful book Spend some time on Tunnel Island and youll never want to leave Steven Price author of Lampedusa and By Gaslight

The immense pleasure that Tunnel Island gave me came from every possible source from the lovingly described settings the unexpected narrative turns the supple sentences the close observations What a talent Bill Gaston is What a master of the craft Barbara Gowdy author of Little Sister and The White Bone

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Details

Dimensions:

228 Pages
8.50in * 5.50in * .50in
280.00gr

Published:

April 29, 2025

Publisher:

Thistledown Press

ISBN:

9781771872683

Featured In:

All Books

Congress 2025

Language:

eng

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