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Winnipeg Free Press
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
A delicate structure
Fans of Madeleine Thien's writing could be excused for feeling impatient about the author's followup to her bestselling novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. The novel, published in 2016, won the Montreal author the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and landed on the short list for the Booker Prize. The nine-year gap was worth the wait. Babak Salari photo Madeleine Thien is the author of four novels and a short story collection. Thien's new novel, The Book of Records, published May 6 by Knopf Canada, is sure to satiate fans and win new ones, and will likely again draw the attention of national and international book prize juries. Thien didn't anticipate the novel, which she started in 2016, would take so long to come together. 'All I knew at the beginning was I wanted to write about a father and daughter and I had this idea about a building made of time — I was thinking about Einstein: time is space, space is time. I thought, 'What are the ideas or the questions I want to live with, I need to live with for the next five years?'' Thien says by Zoom. 'It turned out to be almost 10 years — maybe because I felt like I was chasing something for a long time that I couldn't pin down.' The Book of Records defies simple summation. In the future, Lina and her ailing father flee their home in Foshan as it is ravaged by the effects of climate change, arriving at a mysterious building called the Sea, which seems to exist outside conventional notions of space and time. Other migrants come and go from the Sea, but the two settle in for years. Lina has brought three books with her that detail the lives of three real-life thinkers: 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza; 8th-century poet Du Fu;and 20th-century German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt. A trio of neighbours at the Sea, essentially stand-ins for the real-life trio, tell their stories in an attempt to set their proverbial records straight; Thien provides riveting accounts of actual events that took place in each of their lives. 'One of the paradoxes of writing literature is that you're almost always trying to capture in language that thing which is not capturable by language. And even if you're able to hold it in your hands, you think, 'But that's not it' — and the search continues. So much is intertwined, so much only becomes visible as the structure materializes over the course of the book. It's not something that can be seen in the first 15 or 20 pages — it requires going on a journey together,' Thien says. On her journey, the 50-year-old Thien found more literary companions in authors Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges and Yoko Ogawa. 'The joy of having those as figures in my mind … was that they're all so different from each other, and I'm so different from them, so there was no model, just companions, and maybe a recognition that they too, had been looking for structures that could hold that thing that is just beyond our grasp,' she says. Despite the weighty philosophical and political themes that run throughout The Book of Records — displacement, migration, climate change, biography and betrayal — the novel is propulsive, with the ideas acting like brushstrokes that form a rich and complete picture by the novel's end. The Book of Records While writing the book, Thien envisioned a reader along the lines of Lina's age (she's seven when she arrives at the Sea with her father and 14 when they leave). 'There's a lightness of touch that I wanted, that sense that these ideas belong to all of us, that I, too, am just an ordinary reader. I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a theorist of any kind, just a person looking for answers, meaning, some way to hold all this together,' Thien says. 'Young Lina was very much at the forefront of my thoughts as an imagined reader.' Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. The passages detailing events in the lives of Spinoza, Du Fu and Arendt saw Thien attempt to see the world from their respective perspectives, a task requiring extensive research. 'I tried to read what they were reading at that time in their life, but it was an almost impossible task because someone like Hannah Arendt was reading Immanuel Kant when she was 14 and that is not me,' she says, laughing. And while Thien found it daunting to tell their stories in her sprawling, fluid literary landscape, she also enjoyed the trio's company. 'I did feel at times — and maybe every fiction writer has to believe this — I felt they were sitting beside me. They were so real to me. They are so real to me. I feel like I spent nine years in a room with the three of them talking to each other and that I was just literally the housekeeper,' she says. Thien launches The Book of Records at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location at 7 p.m. tonight, joined in conversation by Jenny Heijun Wills. Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben. In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
The back story of the meat-pie baker
When it comes to his novels, horror author David Demchuk's output is a bit of a zig-zag. His first book, The Bone Mother (2017) took us on a tour through a menagerie of monsters tied into the Slavic mythology of Ukraine and Romania. It was nominated for the Giller Prize and a Shirley Jackson Award. The monster in his followup, Red X (2021), though supernatural, was untethered from established myth, inspired by a real-life serial killer who stalked Toronto's gay village. Interspersed with the horror was a good deal of autobiographical content, describing, among other things, the Winnipeg-born Demchuk's migration to Toronto in the mid-'80s. Dreamworks pictures Johnny Depp in the titular role and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Demchuk's new book, The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett (Hell's Hundred, 432 pages), written in collaboration with Canadian author Corinne Leigh Clark, returns to the realm of legend. It's an ambitious telling of the story of Mrs. Lovett, the fabled Victorian-era murderess who aided London serial killer Sweeney Todd in the disposal of his victims' bodies by baking their remains into pies. While Mrs. Lovett and Todd were almost certainly fictions, the product of 19th-century penny dreadfuls — cheap, sensational serial publications — the book adds a dimension of reality that is more sympathetic to the Lovett character, at least more than the character in playwright Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Broadway musical interpretation, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (Patti LuPone, who played the role in a 2000 production, said she felt Mrs. Lovett was the true villain of the story.) In fact, Demchuk — also a notable playwright — got the ball rolling on the book in December 2021, a month after Sondheim died. 'I first mentioned the project to my agent, Barbara Berson, and indicated to her that I would need another writer with greater knowledge of the time and place to partner with me to complete the book on a reasonable timeline,' Demchuk says in an email interview from his home in St. John's, N.L, where he lives with his husband. 'Corinne was another client of Barbara's who was remarkably well suited for the project. By Christmas we had agreed to work together and began in earnest in January 2022.' Supplied Sketches of Mrs. Lovett for the 2018 Sweeney Todd musical at Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre The book hardly seems like the product of two authors. One can detect no demarcation anywhere in the book's narrative, which largely takes the form of letters from one 'Margaret C. Evans' to investigative newspaper reporter Emily Gibson. Demchuk, who turns 63 next month, says the collaboration was a happy conjunction of expertises. 'I was familiar with some of the stage melodramas, sensation novels and penny dreadfuls of the era, so I began to develop the plot and the structure with those as the inspiration,' he says. 'Corinne was less experienced than I was at plot and structure and form, but had studied in London and worked in theatre there for a while, primarily on sets and costumes, which meant that she had literal hands-on experience with the look and feel of Victorian England. She also has a great love of all things Gothic, and had considerable historical knowledge and access to research materials.' To start, Demchuk gave Clark some preliminary research and writing assignments, such as developing some of the secondary characters. With that groundwork, the two were able to adapt and meld their writing styles to create a unified voice. Supplied David Demchuk 'I think we were both amazed at how quickly it came together from there. It was very much a 50/50 partnership — I think by the end there wasn't a word left that we hadn't both touched in one way or another,' Demchuk says. The book offers a more fleshed-out interpretation of Mrs. Lovett, the result of careful consideration between the authors. 'Our key question going into the project was: even considering how grim the Victorian era was for working-class people in general and women in particular, what happened to this particular woman that led her to assist her murderous associate by grinding and baking his victims into pies?' Demchuk will be signing copies of The Butcher's Daughter on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Raven's End Books in St. James. 'Twelve-year-old me would never have believed that Winnipeg would have a bookstore focused on horror, and that I would one day be signing my novel there,' he says. 'And yet I think Winnipeg has always been a strong supporter of horror, in film and in print and on other platforms. I think the genre is more popular than ever, thanks to our worldwide anxieties over just about everything.' Randall KingReporter In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Calgary Herald
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Rotary Club of Calgary hosting 10-day book sale to support children
The Rotary Club of Calgary is hosting a donation drive of books mainly authored by Canadian writers between Friday and May 4 for a 10-day sale that will begin less than a week later. Article content Article content The event, called the Calgary Reads Big Book Sale, lasts from May 9 to 19. Article content The sale will dedicate an entire aisle to hundreds and perhaps thousands of books written by Canadian novelists, said Shirley McIntyre, lead of the fiction section. Article content Article content 'We always have a lot of the new Canadian novels that are popular because they were featured in Canada Reads or the Giller Prize, but we also have so many of those classics that maybe you always meant to read and just never got around to it,' McIntyre said, citing classic Canadian authors such as Carol Shields, Robertson Davies, Stuart McLean and Margaret Atwood. Article content Article content The sale will also give readers an opportunity to explore Canadian history, politics, cooking and travel. Calgarian writers, meanwhile, will fill an entire table. Article content 'You don't have to look to other countries for great writing. We have so many books that tell our story—and many can be hard to find otherwise if they're vintage.' Article content However, the array of books wouldn't be possible without donations. 'If we all fill up a box or two with books we've read—what a difference we can make in ensuring more children can read by Grade 3 and experience the joy of having their very own books,' says Steacy Pinney, chair of Rotary Club of Calgary's Early Childhood Literacy Committee, which leads the sale and distributes the proceeds to early childhood education programs across Calgary. Article content Article content Last year, the event raised $570,000, which was distributed among various initiatives, including bolstering speaking skills among children, literacy among fathers and providing thousands of books to families with low incomes. Article content 'The more quality books we have, the more children we can support so they can reach their potential in school and in life—and getting that extra reading help is more important than ever,' Pinney said. Article content Interested donors could donate during the following hours.
CBC
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Salman Rushdie, Anne Michaels and Madeleine Thien among writers at 2025 Blue Metropolis Festival in Montreal
Social Sharing Authors Salman Rushdie, Anne Michaels and Madeleine Thien will be featured at the annual Blue Metropolis Festival. Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival is an annual multi-lingual literary festival in Montreal. It runs in-person from April 24-27, with online events starting mid-April. Bringing together authors and readers from around the world and across languages, this year's theme is "Time, the Tree, the Page." Former Writers & Company host, Eleanor Wachtel, will host a new interview series which will include a discussion with Canadian author Madeleine Thien. This is a role reversal of the final original episode of Writers & Company where Thien interviewed Wachtel. Rushdie is set to receive the 2025 Blue Metropolis Grand Prize. He will be interviewed by Wachtel on April 26 following a special conversation with Simon Sebag Montefiore on history, dreams and imagination. Rushdie's fiction, notably the Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children, has brought him his greatest acclaim. His other novels include Shame, The Moor's Last Sigh and Victory City, which he completed shortly before the stabbing on a lecture stage at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. Rushdie has a collection of novellas and short stories coming out this fall, The Eleventh Hour, his first published fiction since being stabbed repeatedly and hospitalized in 2022. In 1992, Salman Rushdie made a secret visit to Canada. Writers & Company looks back, 30 years later In February, the 77-year-old Rushdie returned to the area and testified in the trial against his assailant, Hadi Matar. A jury found Matar guilty of assault and attempted murder, convictions that could lead to up to 25 years in prison. The judge has set sentencing for April 23. Michaels will take part in two events on April 26; a panel on the art of translation as well as a conversation with Rachel Eliza Griffiths on the theme of "Is the time of art and fiction the same as human time?" Based in Toronto, Michaels is a poet and author who has previously won major literary awards including the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Trillium Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Michaels won the 2024 Giller Prize for her novel Held. Before taking home last year's prize, she was shortlisted for the Giller Prize twice: in 1996 for Fugitive Pieces and in 2009 for The Winter Vault. Thien's interview with Wachtel will be to discuss her latest book, The Book of Records, which is set to come out May 6, 2025. Thien is a short story writer and novelist. She is the author of the novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her debut novel, Certainty, published in 2006, won the Amazon First Novel Award and was a Globe and Mail Best Book. Thien is also the author of Dogs at the Perimeter, which was a Globe and Mail Best Book, and the children's book The Chinese Violin. Her first work of fiction, Simple Recipes, won four awards in Canada and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Other authors in attendance at this year's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival include Niigaan Sinclair, Stephen Graham Jones, Peter Wohlleben and Alice Irene Whittaker. Whittaker has been longlisted for all three CBC Literary Prizes. She was on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist and she was also on the CBC Short Story Prize longlist in 2012.
CBC
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
10 Canadian books turning 10 in 2025
Books published in 2015 are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year! Check out this list of 10 Canadian titles celebrating this milestone and see if your favourite classic is featured — or find a new read to add to your collection. Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis In Fifteen Dogs, the Greek gods Hermes and Apollo bet on the outcome of giving animals human consciousness. Their test cases: the 15 dogs spending the night in the back of a Toronto veterinary clinic. What unfolds is a powerful story about what it means to have consciousness, and the good and the bad that comes with it. Fifteen Dogs, championed by Humble The Poet, won Canada Reads 2017 and the 2015 Giller Prize. André Alexis was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and raised in Ottawa. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award (now known as the First Novel Award) and the Trillium Book Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, The Hidden Keys, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Days by Moonlight, which won the 2019 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. WATCH | André Alexis reads most memorable sentence from Fifteen Dogs: André Alexis reads from Fifteen Dogs 8 years ago Duration 1:09 The Illegal by Lawrence Hill The Illegal examines the plight of refugees who risk everything to start over in a country that doesn't want them. After his father is killed by a dictator's thugs, elite marathon runner Keita Ali flees his homeland and goes into hiding in a country known as Freedom State, where his presence is illegal and he must go underground to save his own life. Lawrence Hill is the acclaimed author of novels such as The Book of Negroes, The Illegal, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice. He also delivered the 2013 Massey Lectures, Blood: The Stuff of Life. The Book of Negroes won Canada Reads 2009 and was adapted into a six-part miniseries, which can be streamed on CBC Gem. Hill has also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He has a star on Canada's walk of fame and was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2015. The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda In the novel The Golden Son, Anil, the eldest son from rural India, leaves for America to become a doctor, while his childhood friend Leena faces hardship after an arranged marriage. Their paths diverge, but fate brings them together again at a time when they need each other most. The Vinyl Cafe Turns the Page by Stuart McLean In The Vinyl Cafe Turns the Page, Dave and Morley navigate the changes of growing older and their children growing up, while Dave continues to find himself in amusing conundrums. Despite the shifts in their lives, some things remain constant for the beloved family. Stuart McLean was a bestselling author, journalist, humorist and the host of CBC Radio's The Vinyl Cafe. McLean has earned numerous awards, including the Canadian Author's Association Jubilee Award in 2004, three Stephen Leacock Memorial Medals for Humour and the CBA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson After the War is Over follows Charlotte Brown as she navigates her life after the First World War, balancing love, duty and personal growth in a shifting world. Faced with an opportunity to speak out for those in need and confronting her past with a former lover, Charlotte must find the courage to choose the future she truly desires. Jennifer Robson is a Toronto-based historical fiction writer. She is the author of several novels, including The Gown, Somewhere in France and Goodnight From London. She holds a doctorate in British history from the University of Oxford. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood In The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood envisions a dystopian society where people rotate between roles as prisoners and guards in a social experiment. Seeking stability, Stan and Charmaine join the Positron Project in Consilience, but soon find themselves ensnared in a dangerous and unpredictable situation, especially after Charmaine's romantic involvement with another man sets off a series of events that put Stan's life in jeopardy. Atwood is a Canadian writer who has published fiction, nonfiction, poetry and comics. She began her writing career with poetry, publishing The Circle Game and winning the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in the late 1960s. She's since published more than a dozen poetry collections, including The Journals of Susanna Moodie in 1970, Power Politics in 1971 and Dearly in 2020. She has won several awards for her work including the Governor General's Literary Award, the Giller Prize and the Booker Prize. She was named a companion to the Order of Canada in 1981. In 2024, she was the recipient of the Writer in the World Prize for her impact on literature, art and culture. Open Heart, Open Mind by Clara Hughes Clara Hughes bares her heart in the memoir Open Heart, Open Mind. Hughes, the only athlete to win multiple medals in both summer and winter Olympics, overcame a troubled childhood and battled depression throughout her career. After retiring from speed skating, she became a passionate humanitarian and mental health advocate, using her platform to promote forgiveness and awareness. Hughes is a cyclist, speed skater, author and humanitarian. Empire of Night by Kelley Armstrong Moria and Ashyn are tasked by the emperor with rescuing the children of Edgewood in Empire of Night, but their mission becomes dangerously complicated by betrayal, treachery and mounting unrest in the empire. As they face deadly enemies and the threat of war, they must rely on their strength and power to survive. Kelley Armstrong is the author of the Darkest Powers, Darkness Rising and Age of Legends trilogies for teens. She is also the author of numerous thriller and fantasy series for adults, three YA thrillers and the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying series. The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands In The Blackthorn Key, Christopher Rowe, an apprentice to Master Benedict Blackthorn, is thrust into danger when a mysterious cult targets London's apothecaries. As the murders close in on Blackthorn's shop, Christopher must use his skills to discover the key to a deadly secret with the power to tear the world apart. The Blackthorn Key received the John Spray Mystery Award and was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Best YA Crime Novel Award. Kevin Sands is a Toronto-based author of numerous books including the Blackthorn Key series. Sands has also written Children of the Fox and Seekers of the Fox, which were the first two books of the middle-grade fantasy series Thieves of Shadow. We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen In We Are All Made of Molecules, 13-year-old Stewart Inkster and 14-year-old Ashley Anderson, polar opposites in both personality and social status, are forced to live together when their parents move in together. Told in alternating voices, the story explores family dynamics, rivalry and the complexities of adolescence. Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. In 2008, she published her first YA novel, Word Nerd, and has been writing steadily since. Her previous books include which was longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and Optimists Die First. Nielsen lives in Vancouver.
