IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SINGING FLAMINGO

Reminiscent of Lorrie Moore and Heather O'Neill, Claire Tacon's pitch perfect second novel, IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SINGING FLAMINGO, is equally heart-warming as it is heart-breaking. IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT SINGING FLAMINGO is ultimately the story of a father, struggling to let his daughters grow up, and of a working class family, struggling against hard odds, to take care of each other when the world lets them down.

Going into parenthood, Henry Robinson never anticipated the wonder he would find in being a father. When his first daughter, Starr, is born with Williams Syndrome, Henry swears to devote his life to making her happy.

Years later, working at Frankie's Funhouse, where Starr loves the life-like robots, Henry befriends Darren, a high school student who plays Frankie at work. Darren needs to get to the Chicago ComiCon to win back his ex-girlfriend and when Henry's wife and younger daughter express their feeling of neglect, and suggest that Starr should be more independent, Henry packs Starr (and her pet turtles) and Darren (still dressed as Frankie) into the van for a road trip no one was prepared for.

Claire Tacon's first novel, In the Field, was the winner of the 2010 Metcalf-Rooke award. Her fiction has been short-listed for the Bronwen Wallace Award, the CBC Literary Awards and the Playboy College Fiction Contest, and has appeared in journals and anthologies such as The New Quarterly, sub-TERRAIN and Best Canadian Short Stories. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is a past fiction editor of PRISM international.