This Halloween, we’re getting a little witchy with four books from New Brunswick’s own Goose Lane Editions, books that cast spells, communicate with the dead, divine the future, and heal a family curse. You might say these picks are utterly enchanting.
By:
ALU Editor
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Here are four bewitching books to check out this Halloween and after:
Cast a Revealing Spell on Daniel Scott Tysdal’s The End is in the Middle
Fold the paper,
press and scrap,
reveal the line
to poem make.
In Daniel Scott Tysdal’s innovative collection The End is in the Middle, the poems do not end at the bottom of the page, but within it. Taking inspiration from Al Jaffee’s illustrated fold-ins in MAD Magazine, Tysdal explores living with mental illness through a new kind of poetry: the fold-in poem. By folding in the two sides of the poem, the reader completes the final line of each poem, probing both Tysdal’s own psyche and the myriad environments that work to enfold those who are deemed mad.
In 1842, John McLoughlin Jr. — the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Stikine, in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia — was shot to death by his own men. They claimed it was an act of self-defence, their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader and the case never saw the inside of a courtroom, no one was ever charged or punished for the crime. Now, Komar is unlocking the secrets of the dead through archival research and modern forensic science to discover what really happened the night John McLoughlin Jr. died in her award-winning book, The Bastard of Fort Stikine.
Glimpse the Future and Divine Disaster with Riel Nason’s The Town That Drowned
In The Town that Drowned, Ruby Carson was a normal girl concerned with all the normal awkwardness of growing up, until a fateful day at a skating party when she plagues info freezing water. Ruby thinks having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment, but having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies her status as an outcast. What Ruby saw during that fateful day was her entire town — buildings and people — floating underwater. Soon, an orange-tipped surveyor stake is discovered in a farmer’s field. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed as the town prepares for its own demise.
Break a Familial Curse with Amy Spurway’s Crow
When Stacey Fortune is diagnosed with three highly unpredictable brain tumours, she abandons the crumbling glamour of her life in Toronto for her mother Effie’s scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton. Back home, she’s known as Crow, and everybody suspects that her family is cursed. With her future all but sealed, Crow decides to go down in a blaze of unforgettable glory by writing a memoir that will raise eyebrows and drop jaws. She’ll dig up “the dirt” on her family tree, including the supposed curse, and uncover the truth about her mysterious father, who disappeared a month before she was born. Witty, energetic, and crackling with sharp Cape Breton humour, Crow is a story of big twists, big personalities, big drama, and even bigger heart.
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Many thanks to Grace at Goose Lane for sharing these spellbinding picks! Our literary coven’s power only grows.For more witchy picks, why not check out our W.I.T.C.H. list? Happy Halloween!
