Happy 10th! David Worsley on Once and Thought You Were Dead

The Biblioasis titles that first worked for me were by Rebecca Rosenblum and Terry Griggs. Once and Thought You Were Dead had a younger urban focus and a lighter touch that I think are still a bit underrepresented in Canadian fiction. There's not a hell of a lot of mystery to getting introductory readers interested in a book. They need to see even a bit of themselves in it, and find something to identify with. It doesn't hurt when talent wins out in the process. With that in mind, Random House has apparently let Terry's book, Rogues Wedding, go out of print. It would look great in a Biblioasis reprint series.

- David Worsley, Words Worth Books 

Bookmarked: Rogues' Wedding

On September 2nd, Terry Griggs's Rogues' Wedding was honoured in Owen Sound with a plaque as part of Project Bookmark, the second title in the series so-honoured, following only Michael Ondaatje's In The Skin of a Lion. The series "highlights and celebrates the stories that are embedded in our everyday geography."

For those of you who have not read Rogues' Wedding, this should serve as notice that you should do so. It tells the story of Griffth Smolders, who bolts on his wedding night after interpreting a rather odd natural occurence as an evil omen, not even waiting to consummate his marriage. When his wife Avice discovers this, she decides to pursue him to the ends of the earth, if she needs to, to have her revenge. Both embark on a flight of accidental discovery and cataclysmic misadventure -- including making what may be one of the first pornographic films.

Griggs weaves the folk stories and tales and landscapes of northern Ontario into a hilariously ribald tale, and it may be at least partly for this reason that Project Bookmark has honoured her creation. It's well deserved. We've made it clear here our admiration for Terry's writing over the years, and we're thrilled that she's getting a bit more wider recognition. Here's to hoping this leads more people to discover not only Wedding, but her other work for both adults and young adults alike. Like, perhaps, this and this and this.

Re-Lit Longlists

Three Biblioasis titles made the just-announce Re-Lit longlists. Congrats to Amy Jones, in the short fiction category, for What Boys Like, Terry Griggs, in the novel category for Thought You

Were Dead, and Zach Wells in the poetry category for Track & Trace. Wayne Clifford also made it for his Exile Papers, instead of Jane Again, so congrats to Wayne as well.

The Globe 100

Though it's not officially out until tomorrow, if you're a compulsive snoop and head over to the Globe & Mail Books Pages, you can see that they are publishing their annual Globe 100 list tomorrow. Biblioasis has two inclusions in the top 100 for 2009. Terry Griggs's fabulous farcical slacker-cozy of a literary novel makes the cut of the Canadian novels, as it well should, sitting alongside titles by Annabel Lyon, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and company. Sally Cooper enthuses:

Chockablock with winks and digs at the literary set, Thought You Were Dead is a gleeful Russian doll of a novel. Reading it, one trips along, revelling in its wordplay, its wit, its puns and allusions, and its jokes. Then there are the characters: the inventors, writers, realtors and reputation-management specialists who people the antic “sleepy town” of Farclas, Ont. The story is equal parts comic murder mystery, hero’s journey and layered intellectual puzzle, and it satisfies on every level.


Perhaps a bit more surprisingly, Kahn & Engelmann has made the cut as well, this time in the Best Foreign Fiction Category, alongside titles by Zoe Heller, A. S. Byatt, Aleksander Hemon, William Trevor, Lorrie Moore, Nicholson Baker and several others. Very good company indeed. (We have, incidentally, received some even potentially better news about Kahn & Engelmann this eve, though I shall not share it quite yet, for fear of jinxing things. Stay tuned, and I will say more when I can.)

Of Kahn & Engelmann Chris Scott writes: A fascinating family saga, Kahn & Engelmann chronicles five generations of Jewish life. Beginning in 1880 near Lake Balaton, Hungary, the narrative moves episodically from turn-of-the-century Vienna through the 20th century’s convulsions, culminating in the Holocaust, the foundation of Israel and the battles for the survival of the Jewish state.

Other Biblioasis alumni made the cut for books with other presses. Leon Rooke was listed for his collection of short fiction The Last Shot, as was Ray Robertson, for David, both published by Thomas Allen. And though it may be a bit much to claim Annabel Lyon as an alumni, we did publish a chapbook of hers back in 2005, a few copies of which are left. Congratulations to all.

More Love for Thought You Were Dead

There's more love for Terry's Thought You Were Dead. (Now in its 2nd printing!) From the Hamilton Spectator -- we missed it the first time around:

Griggs keeps the action percolating nicely and has a nifty knack with dialogue. As usual, Griggs delivers a satisfying tale. For a quirky and quaint murder mystery, go sleuthing with Chellis, the genre's newest and most unlikely hero.

And from Michale Bryson's Underground Book Club:

(Thought You Were Dead is) exceptionally clever, very funny, sharply intelligent. As many critics have been saying about Griggs for a long time now, she is someone who deserves to win major prizes in this country. Her readership deserves to grow. Everyone who enjoys vigorous prose should scrurry to the nearest big box retail outlet and harrass the teenagers at the counter for a box of Griggs asap.

Death Becomes Her (from the National Post)

by Mark Medley

Traditional thinking has it that if you want your novel to sell well, one of the last things you should do is encourage the murder --even fictional--of a literary critic. But celebrating the demise of book reviewers is exactly how Stratford, Ont., novelist Terry Griggs has promoted her new novel, Thought You Were Dead. Thus far, the Revenge Lit contest Griggs and her publisher Biblioasis have cooked up -- submit a short story imagining the death of a critic--has received dozens of entries -- including some from notable authors -- and garnered buzz across the book world. But what does it say about the authors lining up for the chance to plot a critic's grisly fate?

"We've all, I suppose, experienced our humiliations in the writing world," Griggs says. "Perhaps bad reviews, or what we feel are unjust reviews. It's a very common experience for writers." She laughs: "I noticed that [in] some of the entries, there's a lot of feeling."

The murder of a "freelance reviewer" kicks off Thought You Were Dead, Griggs' seventh book in a career that has spanned more than 20 years, from short stories to comic novels to children's lit.

"I don't like being classified as this kind of writer or that kind of writer," she says during an recent interview at a downtown Toronto coffee shop. "I like moving in between the genres. And besides, this book itself is a bit of a hybrid."

Indeed, Thought You Were Dead blurs the line between genres; the plot apes well-known tropes of hard-boiled detective paperbacks, at the same time packing in enough absurdist humour to render the book a send-up of the genre. There are even illustrations by Nick Craine, lending the book a slight graphic novel vibe. Still, the writing is literary enough to remind you that Griggs was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for her first book, Quickening, way back in 1990 ("It sort of trails behind me like those cans behind a car at a wedding," she says). And the initial idea for the book was even more bizarre: some kind of fictionalized writer's manual concerning genealogy.

Her own literary genealogy is long and varied. Griggs, 57, has published with small presses (Porcupine's Quill), big presses (Random House) and presses that no longer have a fiction program (Raincoast). In 2002, she won the now-discontinued Marian Engel Award, awarded to a female writer in mid-career for a distinguished body of work.

It took six years of writing -- off and on -- to complete her most recent work. Trouble arose when her editor, Patrick Crean, at Thomas Allen & Son wanted changes made to the manuscript that Griggs wasn't willing to make. She withdrew the novel.

"Something just didn't jive," she says. "I couldn't see any problem with it. So I just sat on it for a while. I thought, 'Hmm, maybe I'm missing something here.' ...It was puzzling."

Dan Wells, publisher of Biblioasis, knew Griggs was working on a novel. He asked to read it, then jumped at the chance to publish it. In hindsight, it was a good business move: The book, in stores for a hardly month, has already gone back for a second printing.

"People talk about writers as word-drunk: Terry's work leaves me feeling physically tipsy and giddy," Wells gushes. "I love everything about her writing: the headlong energy of it, the verbal sparring, the humour, the zaniness of her plotting, the biting social farce and criticism. She's a great artist, but she's also a hell of a lot of fun -- an undervalued concept in literary circles these days: We seem to prefer our literature flavoured with castor oil."

And to think Griggs has achieved this success with a quasi-mystery is even more surprising after she admits she'd never even read a mystery before starting to write Thought You Were Dead. She eventually fell in love with the genre through authors such as Ian Rankin, P. D. James and Martha Grimes, but agrees the mystery novel, like other genres of fiction, gets no respect.

"I think it's unfortunate, especially in Canada, that genre writing is stigmatized -- it's thought of as a lesser form," she says. "I certainly don't look down on any other genre. I'm quite happy to read anything that's well-written. That's what I'm looking for.

"But of course," she adds, "the reward for those books is that they sell really well."

As a full-time writer, Griggs ekes out a living through her craft, though she jokes it doesn't really allow her to make a "decent" living.

"I'm happy to be publishing, and I haven't made any compromises. I write my idiosyncratic books and I get great response from readers. That's very gratifying. It's hard to say. I have lots of things planned and on the go, but who knows? Maybe I'll get a real job."

Pickle Me This interviews Terry Griggs

There's an excellent interview with Terry Griggs over at Kerry Clare's Pickle Me This. I really want to thank Kerry for this, and her support of terry's books this Spring. She also reviewed both Dead and Quickening here.

The whole interview is fab, so check out the whole thing (just follow the Pickle Me This link above.)

And I'd like to take a second to wish Kerry the best in the coming weeks, as she's about to become a new mom. And to Stuart as well, of course. Best to you both.

Here's a taste of the interview:

I: What has been your experience of crime fiction? Prior to Thought You Were Dead, were you an avid reader of it? What writers and books are you most familiar with? What are your thoughts on the genre?

TG: Very little experience, really. Before starting research for Thought You Were Dead, I’d read maybe two or three mysteries. But at some point I became interested in the form and intrigued with its popularity, especially among readers who would not otherwise read genre fiction. I’m an Eng Lit grad, so for the longest time the only kind of work I read was literary. Not a lit-snob, just didn’t know any better, thought that’s where the good stuff was. And it is, of course, but certainly not all. I still think of literature as being in two categories, although for me it’s no longer the literary/ popular fiction divide, but basically what appeals and what doesn’t. Some books fulfill my reading needs and desires and others don’t—it’s as simple as that. I find this a satisfying re-arrangement of priorities and one that opens up the field.

As for books: I discovered Ian Rankin’s Rebus series early on and followed along —to think that his publishers had wanted to dump him at one point before he hit the big time! I’ve read all of P.D. James and Martha Grimes, most of Elizabeth George, and sampled many others.
Kate Atkinson I’ve always liked, and she’s written some mysteries of late (although I believe she doesn’t call them that). Haven’t delved much into the oldie-goldies yet, I confess, although Dan Wells, my publisher has just sent me a copy of Chandler’s The Little Sister.

I: What did you learn about crime fiction while writing this novel? Though you've constructed a send-up of the genre, you're still working within the formula. How was this experience different from your previous writing?

TG: I feel that I’ve always written mysteries, just not the kind that come with the sort of conventions that need to receive at least a nod as one is passing through. And literary does have its own formulas, perhaps less obvious ones. I found the genre to be a fair bit of fun, the form flexible enough to sustain a bit of larky handling. Although this book comes out as a send-up, it’s really just creative play and me inhabiting the genre in my particular, albeit subversive, way, making it my own, leaving my thumb print (evidence!). Plot is perhaps more easily traceable in Thought You Were Dead than in some of my other works, although I’ve never considered it a lesser element. I want to be a good storyteller.

Death by Prose: RevengeLit # 4

by Wayne Clifford

It wasn’t that I’d caught him, most of the way through a party at Big Name’s place, with my wife, twice, once in the laundry room, once on the little balcony off the guestroom (it was a breezy summer evening, and in another moment, her black lacies would have flown from her big toe, some regrettable liberation’s flag!). It wasn’t that I’d caught him in the sack with my kid brother after that literary soiree at Three Named Poetess. Not even the incident with my wire-haired pointer, Grisham. No, it was that, after the quick-witted apologies and really clever excuses each time I caught him, his review in the Grub and Moil of my novel in alexandrines, The Cold-Footed Pastor of Gimli, (a passionate tale of Rosie, warm-everythinged and Irish-Cree, and the new-in-town Lutheran preacher, Yan, who was, well, cold-footed (I knew the novel had everything The Great Canadian One could ask for: Winter! Long, long winter! Mounties! Mounties mounting Mounties! Mounties mounting their horses with Tazerish abandon! Baptists! Lutherans! Seal-slaughter!)) was so heavy-handed, it landed like a clot of lead on the composing room floor. Or, more contemporaneously, a splat of weighty polysyllables too flabby to do a push-up between them.

I’d have revenge. I wrote a piece for the anthology he was editing. I knew he’d read it just for the pleasure of rejecting me, and, because it would be brought out by that press using as its mascot the fish-eating flightless bird of a continent no one owns nor wants to, I didn’t even care that the prose started out predictable and pedestrian. No! I mixed every metaphor I could manipulate! I punned pathetically! I advanced the plot academically, I narrated nuancelessly! And I inserted on the penultimate page a priceless paragraph, poetical, paradoxical and so startling with its freshness, that I knew, after the stretch of drivel I’d given him, his aesthetic sense would blow as surely as he’d blown my hound.

So that’s my story, dear reader. Death by prose. And I’ll pull a Mulroney if you ever mention it again.

Poking Fun at the Mystery Genre

from the Guelph Mercury

Thought You Were Dead

by Terry Griggs

(Biblioasis, 224 pages, $19.95 softcover)

Thought You Were Dead is a book that's surcharged with creative energy, crammed with a playful fullness of invention that seems at times a threat to its binding.

It is, primarily, a parody of the traditional village mystery. The location is the southern Ontario town of Farclas, promoted by its boosters as "Friendly, Safe, Fun! "

The hero is Chellis Beith, researcher and fact checker for an eccentric novelist named Athena Havlock. His anachronistic line of work (Ms. Havlock does not, apparently, go online) makes him both a good amateur detective -- he recognizes "God is in the details" -- as well as a facile conversationalist whose head is always full of facts and factoids, and the difference between the two. His synapses fire so quickly his head sounds like a bug zapper, and almost everyone's dialogue similarly sparks with zingers. Such nimble mental and verbal patter is native to noir, but not what you expect from your typical cosy.

Mystery and intrigue hit close to home when a book reviewer is murdered in a neighbouring town.

"Who would want to kill a lowly book reviewer?" Chellis sensibly asks. Then decides: "Only about a thousand people (he) could think of offhand."

Then Ms. H. mysteriously disappears. Is there a connection?

Chellis, assisted by ex-flame/domestic scientist Elaine, is on the case.

Traditional mystery buffs may feel a bit put out. Griggs, a Stratford writer, hasn't written a puzzle book that invites the reader to pick up clues and figure out whodunit.

Instead she has opted for a more general satire, not only of the mystery genre but the world of CanLit in general.

One imagines Farclas to be somewhere in Alice Munro country, and when Chellis drives through "this dingier, ungroomed stretch of the province" with its immense fields sectioned into "deep squares of swishing yellow plant matter," he sees in its rundown streets the very source of its "literary gothic reputation."

And if this is the source of so much of our literary culture, at the other end retail receives no kinder treatment. One particularly acid scene has Chellis and Elaine going to the mall and visiting a big box bookstore furnished with shelves of books for Dummies and staff members who think Tolstoy is a Canadian author.

The structure is wobbly, with the story seeming to lose track of itself on occasion, perhaps from taking a bit too much delight in its own McGuffins.

But Chellis is a likable hero -- an orphan who is both cynical and gullible, as well as a slacker dedicated to his employer -- and the supporting cast are colourful diversions. The writing is relentless in its synaptic firing and the illustrations -- yes! illustrations! -- by Nick Craine help fill out a thoroughly enjoyable package.

Agatha Christie liked to refer to her own mysteries simply as "entertainments," a form to which Griggs shows herself a capable heir.

Alex Good is a Cambridge-area writer and producer of GoodReports.net, a website devoted to books.

No Comment: A Revenge-Lit Flash Fiction (#3)

by Shane Neilson

He looked good, chalked up, chalked off. He deserved it. He had been chalking up books for a few years, getting his start at an Open Mic and confirming his love for his own voice. But getting poetry into journals was a harder task than showing up early at readings, and poetry forced him to modulate his voice, and he wanted to hear his own voice. So he began writing reviews, finding that editors loved blood on the page. And he loved the blood of others on the page. He sometimes went back to the Open Mic, but randomly, to increase the terror, and he refused to read poetry, he read reviews, reviews of the books that were being read that night. The Open Mic organizers let him do it, because they were afraid of him, afraid that he would write reviews about them, and he would, and they knew he would, if they refused him. But his voice: he recorded a whole CD of his reviews, titled it Greatest Hits, and reviewed it himself in a local magazine, the only time –ever, it would turn out- he would uncork the word “masterpiece.” It was an odd voice, a wannabe Caper accent forced through a potato peeler, and it was completely out of sync with its own malice. It is this way I imagine him, stabbed in the back, his assailant refusing to identify himself or even preface his attack with the knowledge that he was about to die, blissfully composing his latest takedown on the way back from the Open Mic where the featured reader that evening, I hear, is smiling as he utters his most famous review, “No Comment.”

Writing Lessons: RevengeLit#2

Tune in at revengelit.blogspot.com
to ensure that you don't miss a thing. Revenge stories by Nathaniel Moore, Shane Neilson, Wayne Clifford and others to follow shortly. A really, really good start to this! Thanks to everyone, and keep them coming!

Writing Lessons
by Lydia Ondrusek

Ivor Miskelson was a hated child.

Like a weed that sucks up repeated attacks of pesticide to become, finally, poisonous itself, he dealt with the rejection of his relatives and peers, raised himself from the garden plot, and became the grotesque focus of all eyes, unplanned impediment to the growth of everything around him.

Ivor Miskelson became a literary critic.

Read To Me, Miskelson’s television show, was a trainwreck. Millions tuned in every week to see if its host could, by a series of increasingly ugly jabs, again reduce a bestselling author to tears. He did not disappoint. Until Jonquil Esterhaus.

He questioned her lifestyle, laughed at her hat. She admitted her changing from writing children’s books to cozy mysteries could cripple the educational life of a generation. Her demeanor remained serene. After reading the teaparty scene from “I’m Afraid The Vicar Is Out,” she even kissed Miskelson during the closing music. Credits rolled with them deep in conversation, holding hands.

Police responded to a call from Esterhaus the next morning to find her in her bedroom, marking galleys. The late Mr. Miskelson sprawled fully dressed across her calico bedspread, dried spittle on his chin and an empty cup that looked like it had held cocoa clutched in stiff fingers.

“He said I was fascinating, that he wanted to see what I was working on next,” Esterhaus said to the detectives as people dealt with the body. She patted the galley of “The Coroner’s Cocoa.”

“So I showed him.”

James Reaney on Terry Griggs's London Launch

Several book launches to report upon, with photographs, once I get my act together. For now, here's James Reaney's take on Terry's London launch on Wednesday.

from the London Free Press:

Terry Griggs - former Londoner, now of Stratford - read at the Landon library last night from her brilliant & hilarious new novel, Thought You Were Dead.

In the admittedly sparse (where were you?) audience, there were many writers - Bonnie Burnard, Penn Kemp, Joan Barfoot, Jean McKay (who introduced Terry), Christine Walde & some I probably missed. Solidarity & good writers in a room . . . always good to see.

Anyway, I laughed aloud many a time as Terry read the opening chapter about her wimpoid anti-hero Chellis Beith who was pining over lost love, Elaine Champion. After the reading, Terry said she found the name Chellis in a magazine .

She also read a little from a new story added to the reissued collection Quickening . . . a dog named Lucifer figured in it . . . Lucifer was one of two witnesses to a supposed crime & of course speaks dog.

After some "misadventures" getting Thought You Were Dead to the right publisher, she found a good match in Daniel Wells and his Emeryville (near Windsor) biblioasis imprint.

In addition to helping Canadian literature with Thought You Were Dead (launched last night) and its republishing of Quickening (Porcupine's Quill, 1990), biblioasis has a neat contest. Fire up & off 250 words or so on a (fictional) literary critic who has just supplied the chalk outline by demising in some bad way & a bunch of good prizes, including the biblioasis catalogue, might be yours.

Visit revengelit.blogspot.com for details.

Visit & read Terry Griggs' Thought You Were Dead for laughs & awe . . . . which I hope to . . . after finishing Don Gutteridge's Vital Secrets, a completely different type of whodunit? from a fine London writer.

The Case of Poe Ethic Justice: A Revenge-Lit Fiction

Simon Lacerous’ column “The Last Word” routinely excoriated literary works: if realistic, they lacked imagination; if fantastic, they lacked veracity; if existential, they lacked moral compass; if moralistic, they were fascist.

As he left his office one midnight dreary, he was confronted by a hooded figure carrying a stylus, a goose quill, a ballpoint, a laptop, and a scythe.

In a flash, Simon saw the error of his ways and shouted out this devious fiction: “When I woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, I found myself changed into a monstrous vermin. Surely that’s punishment enough?”

The hooded figure opened its cloak, revealing multivariate weaponry. It spoke in sepulchral tones: “If, sir, you were in fact changed into a cricket, I should employ this [it indicated a flyswatter] but I perceive you are a critic, indeed of the most slovenly, ambushing, and puling sort.”

“Perhaps so,” S.L. replied, quickly kneeling, “but I made less money than most writers. Oh, spare me, hooded figure!”

H.F. pursed its lips and extruded a large stick of playground chalk. Its robe swirling, it danced macabrely as it drew—on the alley’s tarmac and around the kneeling critic—the forensic figure of a victim.

“Lie here and don’t go outside the lines,” it ordered.

Simon complied.

H.F. pulled a kalashnikoff from its robe and riddled S.L. with a staccato series of very short bursts, creating umlauts, colons, diereses, ellipses, and, even, periods.

Police, seeing the corpse already with an outline, experienced brain seizures.

A second-story window opened and Annabel Lee, an intern with Marlowe, Poirot & Holmes (also a leggy dame with big headlights and a smart mouth on her) cried out, “Look, yuh lousy flatfeets, it’s obvious you should put out an APB for that punk Chu Aishen!”

THE END

Creating a little Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Terry Griggs pens the Tuesday Globe & Mail essay, offering up her thoughts on Musca Domestica. Read the whole thing here. A taste below...

Anyone familiar with my earlier work might be thinking, A mystery? Genre fiction? This isn't her usual thing. Can we trust her? Does she play by the rules?

You can trust me ... implicitly (pick a card, any card). I not only play by the rules, but I play with them as well, and I play in the wild area out behind the school of orthodoxy. Besides, the distinctions matter less than the execution, and literary categories have been getting softer of late. Transgression is in the air and on the page. Who was it that said there is really only one main plot in all fiction, which is: Nothing is as it seems? Somebody, I forget. But if that isn't a dead fly position, I don't know what is.

Musca domestica. In the soup, in the ointment, on the wall, devil's embodiment, associate of death and decay, bearer of much weighty negative symbolism — no wonder the little guy is pretending to be dead. Who wants to work with the regimental efficiency of an ant anyway, or the tireless industry of a bee? Hey, shake a leg if the mood strikes, snack on a glob of jam, check out that dead body wedged behind the sofa. Flies are often the first detectives at the scene of a crime, after all, and perhaps would be less eager if they knew how forensically useful they are in determining the time of its occurrence.

It's fitting, then, that this compound-eyed sleuth is the first bug one encounters in Thought You Were Dead, a book in which the motives are mostly ulterior, spider-to-the-fly situations abound, and the main character, Chellis Beith, has a severe aversion to housework.

Pickle Me This on Thought You Were Dead

Over at PMT, Kerry Clare writes about discovering Terry Griggs, and her thoughts on both Thought You Were Dead and Quickening. Read the whole thing here. Here, though, is a taste:

Griggs' fiction is as demanding as it is rewarding, pulling no punches at all. The reader is plunged rather than eased into the story, whose language must be untangled, unraveled in order to work out the plot. Chellis Beith may be a slacker, but Terry Griggs is no such thing, her tangling and raveling deliberate and intricate, sending up crime fiction, small-town culture, and the literary life. And so much more, this becoming clear with every rereading, with every sentence picked apart, with every one closely read. What a richly textured lark is this, how substantial is Terry Grigg's concept of whimsy.

In other Griggs related news, The Globe Paperback reviewer reviews in Twitter-like fashion Quickening:

QUICKENING

By Terry Griggs, Biblioasis, 156 pages, $19.95

Griggs's collection of short stories was nominated for a Governor-General's Award when it was published nearly 20 years ago, and they still display her talent and quirky sense of humour.

(Griggs writes the Tuesday Essay this week at globeandmail.com/books.)

Revenge-Lit: A Thought You Were Dead Flash Fiction Contest

“Who’s Been Murdering the Book Reviewers of Ontario?” – Globe & Mail

Who would want to kill a lowly book reviewer? Only about a thousand people Chellis could think of off hand. The police were in for some excruciating interviews. Cop: “I understand, sir, that you’re a writer.” Suspect: “Indeed, I am, and my talent was evident from my earliest years…” – from Terry Griggs’s Thought You Were Dead

* * *

Everybody Hates a Critic,

Some people hate them more than others.

Terry Griggs’s new comic-noir biblio-mystery Thought You Were Dead kicks, err, off with a literary critic found under a hedge with a knife in his head, and literary revenge plays an increasingly important role as the novel unfolds. The literary world, and especially the Canadian literary world, can be a small, spiteful – and occasionally murderous – place. Character assassinations abound, books are regularly murdered in the (shrinking) book pages across our fair land, while others are smothered with damningly faint praise. More than a few knives, even if thankfully metaphorical, have been buried hilt deep in authorial backs.

Do you bear the scars of CanLit’s internecine wars? Have you spent a small fortune on postage and only have a drawerful of rejection slips to show for it? Has the world been slow to recognize your evident talent? Then, dear reader, this contest is for you.

To celebrate the launch of Terry Griggs’s Thought You Were Dead, Biblioasis and Seen Reading are teaming up to help you unleash the murder we know is in your heart with our Revenge-Lit contest. Pen a flash fiction of 250 words or so (though, in truth, no one is likely to count them) on the (fictional) literary critic whose body once filled the chalk outline and what he did to get there and send it by June 12th to revengelit@gmail.com. The best of the entries will be published as they are received at RevengeLit.blogspot.com. The winning entry will:

1) Receive a one hundred dollar cash prize

2) Be published in a forthcoming issue of CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries

3) A Biblioasis press catalogue of in-print trade titles (approx. 40 books, retail value approx. $1000.00)

Entries to be judged by Dan Wells, Julie Wilson and Terry Griggs.

For further information, or to read the entries as they come in, check out www.revengelit.blogspot.com.

Griggs's Dead: Cheerfully Insane WhoDunit

From the London Free Press:

This cheerfully insane whodunit recounts the misadventures of Chellis Beith, ValuMart stockboy turned researcher/amateur detective by an eccentric murder mystery writer.

Chellis is, in fact, a grown man, toiling at ValuMart while mourning the sudden death of his beloved adoptive mother, Rennie.

Rennie was "sent spiralling into the NetherWorld" when her bicycle was struck by an "SUV driven by an SOB," as Griggs has narrator Chellis colourfully explain.

Her death is particularly painful since Rennie raised Chellis after his birth mother abandoned the infant at the burger stand where Rennie worked.

After her death, Chellis fills his time lifting "trashy novels" from the store which he reads at night and returns in the morning. He soon meets mystery writer Athena Havlock who is scanning the store's trashy novels when Chellis recommends she read one which - unbeknownst to Chellis - Havlock herself has written.

Havlock- flattered someone's read the thing and has praise for it, but concerned by Chellis's critique citing "factual slip-ups" - hires him on the spot as her literary researcher.

Griggs writes: "Mrs. Havlock had picked him up in the local ValuMart one day along with the gherkins and Melba toast.

"She bagged him and carted him home."

Thus begins a fascinating relationship with Havlock supplying Chellis with a steady stream of investigative assignments washed down with his favourite pastime - cocktails.

When a body shows up in a nearby little town and turns out to be that of a Toronto book reviewer who once gave Havlock a "dismissive" review, the plot takes off in an infinity of directions.

Havlock is just one of the offbeat female characters in Chellis's world.

There's Elaine, the ex-wife he's still obsessed with, who invents things ranging from the "fly catcher," a tiny security system to alert men if they forget to zip their pants, to a bar of soap with remarkable super-glue-like qualities. (The soap plays a pivotal role, later.) There's also Moe, ex-wife and girlfriend (in that order) to Chellis's best pal, Hunt.

It was Moe's idea the couple stay together after the divorce.

An apparent cameo role that will turn into something bigger features my personal favourites, elderly sisters Bev and Brandy who wait tables at the local greasy spoon, The Age Spot.

Bev sets Chellis straight when he asks if her name badge stands for Beverly.

"Got that wrong," Bev replies.

"Name's short for Beverage. Sister's name is Brandy. Parents were drinkers."

Then there's the drop-dead gorgeous Bethany who shows up at Chellis's door with the shocking news she is his half-sister - her mother being the same woman who dumped baby Chellis at Lloyd's Burger Stand all those years ago.

When Mrs. Havlock mysteriously vanishes, Chellis is initially too enamoured of Bethany to care much.

But his neurotic nature and some real-life close calls convince him she's fallen victim to something akin to one of her own plot lines.

The title Thought You Were Dead could apply to several subplots, most obviously Chellis's decision in a moment of drunken reverie to write his own obit, which is subsequently published in the Penny Pincher.

Then there's Hunt's "cardiac event" that has Chellis preparing to bury his best buddy. And of course, there's the missing Mrs. Havlock.

Griggs' writing is sharply witty and swings between baffling and brilliant.

Her unique manipulation of language and metaphors is her gift which has brought her past acclaim, including being shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award for her book Quickening.

The former Londoner has been described as a writer's writer, which may explain why the reader is challenged to sit up and pay attention to follow her many literary tangents.

Thought You Were Dead remains lively and inventive, right through to its entangled ending.

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IF YOU GO

Author Terry Griggs, is launching her new novel, Thought You Were Dead, at London's Landon Branch library, 167 Wortley Rd., Wednesday, May 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Mary-Jane Egan is a Free Press reporter/copy editor.

This'll Kill You: A Globe & Mail Take on Terry Griggs's Thought You Were Dead

WHO'S BEEN MURDERING THE BOOK REVIEWERS OF ONTARIO?

REVIEWED BY SALLY COOPER

Globe and Mail Update

May 1, 2009 at 5:33 PM EDT

In the opening voiceover of the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, the Stranger calls the Dude, the film's hapless stoner hero, "the man for his time and place." Chellis Beith, hero of Terry Griggs's slacker cozy Thought You Were Dead, is just such a man.

Like a word-drunk Dude, a lazy man's Everyman, Chellis stumbles into a mystery at least as twisty and interesting as his own pithy observations on his ludicrous life in the pastoral Southern Ontario town of Farclas.

Chellis Beith, stock boy turned literary researcher, works for Athena Havlock (Alfred Hitchcock's initials), a successful author of series mystery novels and the occasional lauded literary tome. Chellis is in unrequited love with girl next-door Elaine, inventor of domestic products such as the Comedo Vac and SuckZitUp, and now happily married to Vaughan (The Perfect Man) Champion. With his birth mother vanished and his beloved, permissive adoptive mother dead, Chellis is living in Dude-esque stasis in his childhood home.

As he is about to receive his latest assignment from Mrs. H., a book reviewer is murdered in nearby Claymore. "Who would want to kill a lowly book reviewer?" Chellis wonders, rightly. Then Mrs. H. disappears and Chellis spots her driving around with his high-school rival, Dick Major. For strength and courage, Chellis draws upon the moves of Marcel Lazar, one of Athena's series detectives (perhaps based, as Elaine believes, on Chellis in the first place), as he bumbles deeper into this wild plot, fielding inventions, pining for Elaine and gathering clues.

Midway through the novel, Chellis asks: "What would propel a writer to commit an actual murder? Serious plagiarism found out? A vicious rejection (editorial boards being the favoured haunt of sadists)? The extremes of publicity? Sinister, out-of-control research?"

Indeed.

Chockablock with winks and digs at the literary set, Thought You Were Dead is a gleeful Russian doll of novel. Reading it, one trips along, revelling in its wordplay: "What would an epiphanic hour be like, he wondered. Or a whole day?"; its wit: "Publicly [Athena Havlock] was known for her philosophical and linguistically challenging works, and consequently was not much in demand. Just the way she liked it"; its puns and allusions: "Zephyrus on wheels," Pnin's variety store, Hitchcock Crescent, MacAbre Street; and its jokes: "[He] spotted two Beware of Dog signs, and one Beware of Human. Beware of Wag, more like, although some jokes did constitute useful advice."

Then there are the characters, the inventors, writers, realtors and reputation-management specialists who people this antic "sleepy town." Chellis's observations, his relentless verbal riffs, hit not only on words but on the bigger questions of mother love, fear of change, marriage and death. It is a testament to Griggs's skill that this story is equal parts comic murder mystery, hero's journey and layered intellectual puzzle, with nods to many (Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov, to name a couple), and that it satisfies on every level.

Thought You Were Dead is Terry Griggs's first adult novel since being awarded the 2003 Marian Engel Award in recognition of her distinguished body of work. She has published two previous novels, including Rogues' Wedding, short-listed for the Rogers Fiction Prize, and the short-story collection Quickening, nominated for the Governor-General's Award. Her children's book Cat's Eye Corner, the first in a series, has also been short-listed for multiple children's writing awards.

Though figuratively rich and linguistically tortuous, Thought You Were Dead wears its mystery tropes on its sleeve. Elaine names her cat Noir while Chellis considers films such as Dial M for Murder, Montenegro and Pulp Fiction as he mulls over each unsettling event. At one point, he refers to a "McGuffin," the term Hitchcock famously used to mean an object in a caper about crooks or spies that impels villains and heroes alike to pursue each other.

In a chapter called Mallaise, Chellis is helping Elaine with market research when he comes upon a mall-chain bookstore. He reacts with relief, despite its "unreality," dubbing it "a literary oasis." Griggs's wordplay is as much about giving the bird to the staid and WASPy as it is her method of enhancing awareness of the role of fiction and truth in reality. As Chellis muses while sorting through clues, "Fiction filtered so surreptitiously into everyday life that you had to keep your eye on it. But not banish it altogether. That would be too too boring. Besides, it was so useful."

Thought You Were Dead pokes and pokes and pokes — at over-achieving neighbours, Killexed lawns, Protestant work ethics, the Perfect Man and, most deliciously, writers, readers and the life literary. Nothing in Griggs's world is just what it is, making Thought You Were Dead as pleasing and barbed-wire affirmative to read as Alice in Wonderland — but with an even better plot.

Sally Cooper courts the dark side of fiction in her novel Tell Everything.

Thought You Were Dead

For those who have not seen it, a slightly extended version of our trailer for Terry Griggs's forthcoming Thought You Were Dead is up now at the Globe and Mail website. There will be more forthcoming on the Globe site in the coming weeks, including the May 12th installment of the Tuesday essay and a Globe Chapter preview. Stay tuned.

Literary Value First

A couple of nice reviews -- Feature Reviews, no less -- by James Grainger in the current Q&Q of two of our Spring titles: Terry Griggs's Thought You Were Dead and Cynthia Flood's The English Stories. Of Dead Grainger writes, in part: Thought You Were Dead can be summarized as a playful deconstruction of the genteel drawing room detective novel, brimming with knowing winks to fans of the genre and the more highbrow reader ... Beith finds himself in the middle of a sinister plot of Chandleresque complexity. / The narrative and dialogue are clever and lively from beginning to end, and many readers will enjoy the layers of comic nuance as Griggs turns the genre inside out. Beith is a fine take on the stock character of the reluctant gentleman detective ..."

Of Flood he writes: "Flood artfully transplants the conventions of the Canadian Gothic story form and its obsession with death, isolation, madness and antural landscape into the satiric, provincial milieu of the genteel British lower-middle-classes enshrined in the works of V.S. Prichett. ... Flood creates a vivid gallery of British types ... (and) these stories ultimately acheive a brooding resonance that captures the literal and spiritual dampness of a provincial scene that all but died out with the last remnants of the British Empire."