Awards
2018 Independent Publisher Book Award Winner
Synopses & Reviews
In the morning fog of the North Atlantic, Valerie hears the frenetic ticking of clocks. She's come from Toronto to hike on the French island of St. Pierre and to ponder her marriage to Gerard Lefèvre, a Montrealer and a broadcast journalist whose passion for justice was ignited in his youth by the death of his lover in an airline bombing. He's a restless traveller (who she suspects is unfaithful) and she's the opposite: quiet, with an inner life she nurtures as a horticulturalist. Valerie's thinking about Gerard on assignment in her native New York City, where their son Andre works. In New York City, an airplane has plunged into a skyscraper, and in the short time before anyone understands the significance of this event, Valerie's mind begins to spiral in and out of the present moment, circling around her intense memories of her father's death, her youthful relationship with troubled Matthew, and her pregnancy with his child, the crisis that led to her marriage to Gerard, and her fears for the safety of her son Andre and his partner James. Unable to reach her loved ones, Valerie finds memory intruding on a surreal and dreamlike present until at last she connects with Gerard and the final horror of that day.
Review
"Giangrande (Midsummer) sensitively delves into the effects of the 9/11 attacks on one family. Valerie ventures from Toronto to the French island of St. Pierre to contemplate her future worrying that her 30 year marriage to Gerard a freelance journalist might be over. While on the island she hears news of the World Trade Center attack. Gerard is on assignment in New York and Valerie’s son Andre and Andre’s partner James both work in the WTC’s ill fated towers. Overcome by the situation Valerie is thrust backward through the events of her life: her origins in New York her first time meeting Gerard in Montréal at a time when each of them faced a tragedy—he having lost his first love in the Swissair bombing of 1970 she having been abandoned while pregnant with her first child. Giangrande never uses the imagery of 9/11 for gratuitous shock taking a somber tone as Valerie vacillates among confusion horror and self deception while she waits—surrounded to surreal effect by the mundanity of everyday life—to hear of the fates of those closest to her. This is a softly unsettling book effective in showcasing the confusion that follows such a personal yet public crisis but it occasionally veers too far into esoteric poetic detachment. (May)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Synopsis
Fiction. Women's Studies. Winner of an IPPY Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. Shortlisted for the Mary Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction. In the morning fog of the North Atlantic, Valerie hears the frenetic ticking of clocks. She's come from Toronto to hike on the French island of St. Pierre and to ponder her marriage to Gerard Lef vre, a Montrealer and a broadcast journalist whose passion for justice was ignited in his youth by the death of his lover in an airline bombing. He's a restless traveller (who she suspects is unfaithful) and she's the opposite: quiet, with an inner life she nurtures as a horticulturalist. Valerie's thinking about Gerard on assignment in her native New York City, where their son Andre works. In New York City, an airplane has plunged into a skyscraper, and in the short time before anyone understands the significance of this event, Valerie's mind begins to spiral in and out of the present moment, circling around her intense memories of her father's death, her youthful relationship with troubled Matthew, and her pregnancy with his child, the crisis that led to her marriage to Gerard, and her fears for the safety of her son Andre and his partner James. Unable to reach her loved ones, Valerie finds memory intruding on a surreal and dreamlike present until at last she connects with Gerard and the final horror of that day.
About the Author
Carole Giangrande's two most recent books (the novellas Here Comes the Dreamer and Midsummer) were both published by Inanna Publications in 2014. A previous novella, A Gardener On The Moon, won the 2010 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. She's the author of the novels, An Ordinary Star (2004) and A Forest Burning (2000) and a short story collection, Missing Persons (1994), as well as two non- fiction books: Down To Earth: The Crisis in Canadian Farming (1985) and The Nuclear North: The People, The Regions and the Arms Race (1983). She's worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio, and her fiction, poetry, articles and reviews have appeared in literary journals and in Canada's major newspapers.