What Endures

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A couple adopt a difficult dog and argue over morality. A man abandons his family in the middle of the night and spontaneously takes a flight across the country. A woman is rushed into emergency brain surgery at Christmas time.

What Endures represents Pauline Holdstock’s responses to a world evolving at terrifying speed, exposing the absurd, the ridiculous, and the downright disturbing. Ranging from the eerily speculative to the flat-out comic, Holdstock’s stories attempt to discover what it is that saves us, time and again, from despair at ourselves and our world.

AUTHOR

Pauline Holdstock

Pauline Holdstock was born in England and moved to Vancouver in 1974. She now lives on Vancouver Island, and is the author of many short stories, essays and anthologies. She was selected as a finalist for the Books In Canada First Novel Award in 1988 for The Blackbird’s Song and in 2002 was awarded first place for fiction by the Federation of BC Writers. Her sixth novel, Beyond Measure, was shortlisted for the 2004 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Reviews

Praise for Confessions with Keith

Bridget Jones meets Nora Ephron in this diarized account of Vita a woman dealing with an unexpected plot twist after 20 years of marriage

Globe and Mail

Magnetic artfully expressedfunny honest wry intimateprivate thoughts On page after assured page Vitas confounded thrilled irked hurt and enviousabout minutia as well as the big pictureand all of which are facets of what she terms the senselessness of human existence

Vancouver Sun

Succinct cheeky prose Holdstocks fastpaced comic novel with its entertaining narrative will captivate readers especially those who relish domestic tales

Winnipeg Free Press

Things going wrong on many levels is the focus of the novel but Vitas ability to plough through the problems and often see the humour even when exhausted is refreshing Confessions with Keith deals with real life issues in a frenetic and funny manner

Candace Fertile The BC Review

Praise for The Hunter and the Wild Girl

Holdstocks 19thcentury story of connection between this odd pairing of psychological isolates hints at great depth beneath the surface Resonant and troubling like all good fairy tales

Globe and Mail

A thorough examination of what exactly it means to be a persona question more daunting than any human antagonist and one Holdstock raises gradually with great skill and a light touch

National Post

Possibly the most arresting aspect of the novel apart from the exquisite sense of place is Holdstocks implied invitation to consider the essence of a human being

Quill amp Quire