A MARINER'S GUIDE TO SELF-SABOTAGE

A Mariner's Guide to Self-Sabotage displays a fertile imagination channeled through a range of styles.
It's his versatility that sets Gaston apart from Canada's other top short fiction practitioners. ‘Critic' is elegant, somber, its outcome subtly calculated, while ‘The Church of Manna, Revelator' is lunatic and weirdly voiced, as hilarious as it is painful. What links these stories is their element of complete unpredictability, their freshness and surprise, and their potently idiosyncratic yet authentic voice and versatility.

BILL GASTON is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His previous collection Juliet Was a Surprise was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award as was his short story collection Gargoyles, which was also shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and won the ReLit Award and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. Gaston was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize with Mount Appetite, and the
inaugural recipient of the Timothy Findley Prize, awarded by the Writers' Trust of Canada. His most recent novel, The World, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. He teaches at the University of Victoria.