From the Back of the Bookshop: The Strength of Bone Start to Finish

Way back in March, when the snow likely leaked through my boots and road salt tracked its way through the bookshop just as it is doing now, I started what I had the best intentions of making a series about the cover design process at Biblioasis. Since my initial post, which ran through the many varied concepts on the way to producing the final cover for Nancy Jo Cullen's short story collection Canary (Biblioasis, Spring 2013), I've designed many a cover, but the blog "series" on cover design has not moved beyond its first installment.

Today, I present the second part of what I still have the best intentions of making a series: "From the back of the bookshop."

This time, I'm featuring a book from our fall 2013 list, The Strength of Bone by Lucie Wilk. Her debut novel, The Strength of Bone follows the interwoven stories of a Canadian doctor in Malawi, a Malawian nurse, and a young Malawian boy whose mother is receiving treatment at the hospital. What struck me most about Wilk's writing is the way she balances clarity and medical precision with some truly beautiful imagery, making cells on slides as stunning as her landscapes, all while avoiding lapsing into cliche.

Despite my great enjoyment of the novel, a fitting cover design evaded me for a long while. I tend to gravitate towards designs that are minimal, clean, and sometimes quite stark. All of these qualities seemed to be precisely the wrong direction for this cover, so I knew it would be a challenge from the start.

My first thought was to grab one of the images that stood out the strongest to me in the novel, the yellow walls of the hospital. While I rarely use photos in my cover designs, this book seemed to demand a photographic treatment, so I went searching for something that would fit the content and mood of the book. I found a photo of a hospital gurney in a run-down hospital, in front of bright ochre walls.

Great colours. Not so great decor.

Unfortunately, while there were a couple things I liked about the design, such as the type treatment and that fantastic colour, the overwhelming reaction was that the gurney gave more the impression of a torture chamber than a hospital. Since we weren't promoting the latest Saw flick, this idea was not going to work.

Next attempt: photos of people.

Another issue with the first cover concept was that it didn't represent the human interactions that are necessary to the novel. The broken gurney was definitely too bleak and, while I wouldn't call it sterile, it lacked warmth. My next move was to try to incorporate people, and as Iris, a Malawian nurse, features heavily in the book, I tried a concept based around a photo of a Malawian nurse tending to a patient. However, this cover put a bit too much focus on one character, and since the novel splices together the lives of three main figures, there was a problem with balance. I tried a similar type treatment on the photo and played with the focus, but while it was a striking photo, it wasn't right to represent the whole book. Next.

And we're back to cold and clinical again.

 In my continued search for inspiration, I came across this photo of nurses training in Africa. I thought the image had a great visual impact, but I still wanted to incorporate the yellow wall Wilk describes in the novel. I made a couple attempts at overlaying some yellow graphics, but as the image was too stark and cold again I didn't end up working with this one even long enough to do much with the type. Onto something else. 

That typeface keeps coming back.

With this concept, I was still clinging to the typeface from the first cover, which I thought was fitting in that it's nice and clean but also round enough to avoid being too harsh. I also liked the idea of the text appearing almost in negative with the photo showing through. The photo was again intended to emphasize a more human element, with a nurse treating her patients. However, the photo didn't seem to stand out enough for a cover image and the eye had too many places to look all at once. I was sent back to my photo search once more.

Different character. Same issue. Not representative of the whole book.

As with the photo of the single nurse treating her patient, this shot was deemed too specific to one character. Again, since the photo wasn't working, I didn't do much with the typeface, and quickly changed gears.

I walked away from my design attempts for this cover for a couple days and went back to the book. What could I try that I hadn't yet to reflect something broader about the story. This is when I started looking into photos of Mount Mulanje, which plays a prominent role in the novel, to the point where it almost becomes a character itself.

A couple nights' sleep means a drastic shift in concept.

I found this wonderful photo of the mountain, with the lush greenery in the foreground and mists rising above. While it wasn't a hospital, or even a person, there was something about that image that seemed to speak to the novel and give the right impression of its tone. I thought the way the text interacted with the image was also quite organic, for example the overlay of the word "bone" onto the mountain face. This was working better than anything I'd tried to date, but it was not quite right yet. It was time, at last, to re-visit the type treatment.

And we have a winner!

The final cover (above) used the same image of Mount Mulanje but played up the contrast between the greenery, the mountain and the mists to a greater extent. I drew on the way "bone" played against the mountain to do something similar with "strength," darkening it to give it a more dramatic appearance against the mist. One of my favourite aspects of the type treatment is the way "of" appears out of the mists. Add a blurb at the bottom, and the cover is good to go.

From too harsh hospitals, to human interaction, to more harsh hospitals, this was a long haul of a cover design. In the end, the mountain that looms over the story looms also on the cover. And I think it works.

Keep an eye on this spot for more book covers as they progress start to finish. Hopefully in fewer than nine month intervals this time. I have the best intentions.

Kate

Ghosts & Goblins

Afternoon, all, and a happy-ish All Saints'. There's a thing we will NOT do today, no sir—we shall not talk about a certain goblinish review for a certain gigantoid Canadian novel released on Hallowe'en in a certain large-circulating New York newspaper, no, no we shan't—nope. Nary a word. That was yesterday. In the past. The Trick part of the holiday. Plus if we were going to talk about it then there would be that last sentence, right? And that was sort of okay.  Instead, instead instead instead, we're going to talk about the LOVELY review of This Great Escape that came in yesterday from the Montreal Gazette. We also might discuss the fact that Lucie Wilk's The Strength of Bone is today's "First Fiction Friday" pick over at the LPG blog. Yes indeed! Those are the things to mention. TGIF, ladies & gentlemen. Welcome to November.

"As my muse, I had those prisoners of Stalag Luft III. Their ingenuity and courage was outrageous. So you escape a prison camp, you escape obscurity, you escape genre and convention. It’s a prisoner’s duty to attempt escape. Most of us are prisoners of something."
—Andrew Steinmetz on This Great Escape (Montreal Gazette)

Biblioasis Book Launch Tonight at Casa del Popolo, Montreal

We're back from a tryptophan-tastic Thankgsiving and ready for the Montreal launch of our Fall titles tonight at Casa del Popolo.

Join Biblioasis, Mauricio Segura and Donald Winkler, author and translator of Eucalyptus, as we celebrate their hometown launch with a joint reading.

We've also got Andrew Steinmetz with his latest book of non-fiction, This Great Escape, which was recently shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Hilary Weston Prize.

Journey Prize winner Cynthia Flood will be in town, all the way from Vancouver, to read from her latest short fiction collection Red Girl Rat Boy, and Lucie Wilk, who practices medicine in London, UK, also travels from afar to launch her debut novel The Strength of Bone. 

Check out Cult Montreal's launch preview,  in which they call This Great Escape, "fascinating," The Strength of Bone, "a lyrical debut," and Red Girl Rat Boy, "compulsively readable."


If anything is going to wake you from your post-turkey day lethargy, this is the reading to do it.
Doors are at 7pm, and as always, admission is free.

For more info call Biblioasis at 519-968-2206 or email info@biblioasis.com.

With Turkey Day fast approaching, we look forward to having our hunger satisfied by mountains of home cooked food (not to mention pumpkin pie!) but what about our hunger for knowledge? Our thirst for culture? Luckily, Dr. Lucie Wilk has the cure for our yearning minds.

With her debut novel, The Strength of Bone, coming out, Lucie has scheduled a number of appearances throughout Ontario for readings and book signings. She will be  in Waterloo on October 10 (tonight!! - poster below) with fellow authors Cynthia Flood and Alexandra Oliver. In the event you can't make it to see this trio of talent tonight, Lucie will also be appearing in Hamilton on October 16, in Toronto on October 17 and in Windsor on October 18.

She was recently interviewed on Open Book's website for their Writers as Readers (WAR) Series. She describes the books that have influenced her throughout her life.

http://www.openbookontario.com/news/war_series_writers_readers_lucie_wilk

Enjoy the long weekend and remember that while our brains can never really be overstuffed, our tummies certainly can. Eat responsibly this weekend!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Lucie Wilk

Greetings fellow bibliophiles!

My name is Melissa and I am interning here at Biblioasis. In the coming weeks, I will be keeping you up to date on our events as well as introducing you to some of our talented authors.

Today we are focusing on Lucie Wilk, who is appearing tonight (!) in Vancouver, and across the country throughout the month of October. Our only doctor-novelist, Lucy has been nominated for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Anthology, long-listed for a CBC Canada Writes literary prize, and her writing appears in Descant, Prairie Fire and Shortfire Press. In addition to being a practicing rheumatologist, Lucie is also an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

Her first novel, The Strength of Bone, takes place at a hospital in Blantyre, Malawi where a Western doctor and a local nurse are sent to a village outpost. Below is an excerpt from the novel's opening pages.


Wilk's work has received commendations from celebrated authors such as Annabel Lyon ("supple, beautiful") and Joseph Boyden ("a gorgeous debut"), as well as solid advance praise from Library Journal:

Wilk illuminates the differences between Malawian culture and that of the West while capturing both the fever-dream beauty and desperation of the country … Readers who enjoyed Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone may want to give this book a try.

Lucie is also one of five writers appearing tonight at the Real Vancouver Reading Series (One Thousand Rivers, 54 East 4th Avenue in Vancouver, BC). The event starts at 7pm. Other writers include Alexandra Oliver, Anakana Schofield, Rahat Kurd, and Jordon Abel.

For more from Lucie Wilk you can check out her fiction craft piece on Open Book Ontario, or her guest blog over at Gail Anderson-Dargatz's site. She'll also be coming to Calgary (Oct. 9), Waterloo (Oct. 10), Montreal (Oct. 15), Hamilton (Oct. 16), Toronto (Oct. 17), and Windsor (Oct. 18th).

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From The Strength of Bone

Lucie Wilk

Biblioasis, 2013

The sky was milky blue. It seemed wet and somehow stained. Beneath it the ground was dry and untended. Nothing moved. It was winter.

Inside, a young girl lay on a bed in the dark in a room that was filled with the sound of her breath. In and out. In and out. The air was saturated with her breath just as her lungs were sopped in, semi-submerged. Her chest lifted and fell. In. Out.

The visitors who came tried not to share the air. They breathed short and shallow. They tried to be as unaware of their own breath as they were before they entered the room. Because noticing it somehow created lack and just for a moment, they knew suffocation. That is why after a short while they left.

The girl once held her breath. Maybe a year ago she did this. Just an inch under the bath water, her small body still, muscles relaxed, face serene. After what became too long, her mother reached under the water, grabbed her under her arms and pulled her up and when the girl emerged into the air she was triumphant with her discovery. That she could control these sorts of things. She could stop breath like this. On a whim.

Her right arm was folded across her stomach and exaggerated the lift of her chest—a barometer of breath. Her legs were askew, scissor-like. Her skin was sallow but warm. The angle where her neck met her jaw fluttered twice with each pause of her heart. Her lips were dry. Her eyes were closed. Because she was sleeping.

Night or day, the room was kept dark. Because letting the sun in might have been too hopeful. Because hope at this stage was irresponsible.

Around her and inside the room were objects that were still animated by her presence. A doll, a hairbrush with six brown hairs entwined, a box of colouring pencils of different lengths, two parents, one hunched forward, the other leaning back. Their meaning existed because she did, because the girl who held them or hugged them or regarded them with a precise, thoughtful intention still lay sleeping nearby.

She slept because she was tired. She was tired because she was ill. She was ill because—and this was where the chain broke. There was no because. There was no reasonable answer. There was no reason.

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Introducing Lucie Wilk: The Yin and Yang

Morning, folks, and happy Monday. You're going to be hearing a lot more about Lucie Wilk in the coming weeks and months—she'll be launching her new novel The Strength of Bone in cities across Canada and the US this fall—but for now I'd like to point you to the guest blog she did for Gail Anderson-Dargatz's website. Called "The Yin and Yang of Art and Science," it's as good an intro as any to the philosophy of our one and only doctor-novelist, whose work comes highly praised by Joseph Boyden AND Annabel Lyon. My goodness! What a triumverate of support. More from us soon. And in the meantime, enjoy!

"While I am grateful for the knowledge and experience of my scientific forebears, and all the gifts this has given us in providing the best for my patients, and while I honour the procedures and protocols, the flowcharts and the guidelines, I am also grateful for the fact that the patient before me is, ultimately, a mystery. One that I can guide with experience, but one that I will never solve."