Well, folks, it continued to be a good weekend for Malarky. The book didn't, like the rest of Windsor, file into Detroit and get drunk in Mexicantown, nor did it stumble home in the wee hours clutching a bag of tostadas and reeking of margarita salt ... but it did get a little drunk on love. FIVE reviews this weekend: count them. FIVE. Not only did we see some tenderness from The Vancouver Sun and The National Post, but Kassie Rose of The Longest Chapter raved about it, as did The Winnipeg Free Press and Sheryl MacKay on North by Northwest.
So. You can listen to Sheryl MacKay's interview with AK (approx. 22 min) here, and you can see how the rest of the salt shook out below.
In other news, Alex Boyd was yesterday's Sunday Poet on the vehicule press blog, tonight is Alice Petersen's Montreal launch and Alexander MacLeod is reading at the Rowers Pub Reading Series AND Claire Tacon goes viral at Grey Borders; then tomorrow Claire is reading at Palisades Garden in Cobourg and Rebecca Rosenblum continues to spread the Bibliobug at Virus in St Catharine's.
Lord. What a week! And to think it's only--well, a happy, yes happy--it's only Monday. More soon!
Malarky In Review
"Schofield’s brilliant storytelling in Malarky is among the most engaging I’ve ever encountered." - Kassie Rose, The Longest Chapter
"The love of a mother for her son is the central theme of this novel. But the book has much to ask and much to say about many other topics as well, among them empowerment through sex, loneliness in marriage, the futility of war, the strains of immigration and the margins of mental health. Schofield's ability to tie all these together in such an original, quirky, tender and eloquent way is to be commended ... Malarky is an alternately beautiful, brilliant, profound, poignant and comedic work of literary fiction." - The Winnipeg Free Press
"I loved this book Malarky ... I was gobsmacked." - Sheryl MacKay, CBC Radio, North by Northwest
"A challenging but rewarding look at what happens to a mother when the bottom drops out."—The Vancouver Sun
"Delightfully offbeat ... Schofield shows a deft - and altogether welcome - comic touch."—The National Post
"Malarky is an exemplary read ... I look forward to the next of Anakana Schofield’s novels."—Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading
"Irish-Canadian literary critic Anakana Schofield's first novel is a tumultuous ride. Malarky asks questions without providing answers, chronicling the emotional, mental, and occasionally menial anxieties of Our Woman as she struggles with her own agency and desire. Set in contemporary Ireland, the book overflows with subtle and sometimes subversive allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, site-specific contemporary Irish art, and Catholic history. Yet Schofield's strong prose style and inventive approach to structure will likely reward readers unfamiliar with these cultural references."—Quill & Quire
"Malarky is like nothing else, and what everything should be … This is a book that will leave you demanding more of everything else you read."—Pickle Me This
"Malarky is a wacky, dead serious book, and what stands out more than anything is its freshness in a sea of same-old, same-old novels.“—The Telegraph Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment