HOLLYWOOD NORTH

In HOLLYWOOD NORTH, Michael Libling spins a tale of movies and memories, nightmares and nostalgia, with such a frightening secret at its core, that you'll understand why, even though you can go home again, you might end up wishing you didn't. (Ian Rogers, author of Every House Is Haunted)

I don't use the word ‘brilliant' promiscuously, never have, never will, but with Michael Libling's wonderful first novel I use it very comfortably. For another reader, HOLLYWOOD NORTH might be simply ‘ingenious' or ‘charming' or ‘outrageously engaging', but I believe it's more than that—a novel that film buffs will love, along with anyone living in a society with the hand of popular culture upon them as baptism or drowning (or both). Yes, it's charming and human and light-hearted in its seriousness, and clever and rich with a film-lover's allusions, nods and hats-off; but that's another matter. One of the best first novels I've read in a decade.” —Bruce McAllister, author of Dream Baby and The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic “Take Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Theodore Roszak, Woody Allen, and Stranger Things, sprinkle in the spice of a subtle Canadian sensibility, and process it all through the meat grinder that is Michael Libling's imagination, and this is the eerie result.” —Claude Lalumiere, author of Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment “HOLLYWOOD NORTH, perhaps the cleverest use of the so-called unreliable narrator that I have ever seen outside of Nabokov or perhaps Evan S. Connell Jr., is also so devastating as to go far beyond the clever. Michael Libling's first novel is the work of a prodigy with no reference to age and it explores the darkness of human complexity with bravura.” —Barry Malzberg, author of The Bend at the End of The Road, Breakfast in the Ruins, and many others “HOLLYWOOD NORTH is an Orca of a novel, sleek and playful, short chapters and brief sentences that hit with explosive force and open up its other side, the Killer Whale, rising from the deep, throwing itself on Antarctic ice floes, crushing penguins and sea-lions and maybe a blubberfest with a walrus. This is a work of singular beauty, a paean to popular culture, to guilty pleasures, and to the mounds of trivia behind which the truth lies.” —Clark Blaise, author of Then And Now, Time Lord, The Meagre Tarmac and many others “A simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in the small town of Trenton, Ontario, against the backdrop of a little known chapter of Canada's cinematic past. Michael Libling is to be celebrated for this gem of a book.” —Maude Barlow, author of Blue Gold, Boiling Point, and many others “As a rabid fan of Michael Libling's short stories, I could not wait to get my grubby mitts on a copy of HOLLYWOOD NORTH, his long-awaited first novel. I was not disappointed. Once I started, I could not put it down. Michael Libling has a keen memory for the insights and obsessions of boys growing up oddballs in an era of widespread conformity. He writes of their triumphs, terrors, and heartbreaks with an enviable breeziness. But, like a cherry-red hot rod idling in the street at midnight, that slick surface hides a throbbing pulsebeat of dread you feel deep in your chest. When you hop aboard, you're in for a thrilling ride, but there's no guarantee you'll come back in one piece. Or at all. HOLLYWOOD NORTH is the most heartbreaking and chilling novel I've read in a very long time. Gus and Jack would file this find under X, for Excellent. (William Shunn, author of The Accidental Terrorist, editor of The Piltdown Review)

I devoured this harrowing, disturbing, deeply moving tale of loss and redemption set against a backdrop of young love and vanished cinematic history. As with the very best movies, I walked out at the end shaken, changed, grateful. (Paul Witcover, author of The Watchman of Eternity)

Who cares about Trenton, Ontario, the early home to Canada's film industry? Or about Jack, Anne, and Gloomy Gus? You will after you read page one of this unpredictable novel and get sucked into it like I did. (Gordon Van Gelder, publisher Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Editor of Welcome to Dystopia: 45 Visions of What Lies Ahead)

A beautifully deceptive mystery and fantasy noir novel. The book is filled with humor and heartbreak and great homages to classic films. While immersed in this Hollywood North, I felt like I was watching a mesmerizing movie unfold. (Sheila Williams, Editor of Asimov's Science Fiction)

Libling's assured, quietly menacing debut, based on his World Fantasy Award–nominated novella of the same title, is steeped in bittersweet childhood nostalgia and coming-of-age foibles. Trenton, Ontario, in the 1960s is a town full of secrets and home to an unusual string of tragedies, which most of the adults seem to have forgotten; it also has its share of sinister townspeople and more than a few dead bodies. (...) Clues lie in Trenton's history as “Hollywood North,” when it was a bustling silent movie town. Gus's narration is chock-full of wry humor and golden-age film quotes. The leisurely telling belies the hint of evil simmering just below the town's almost aggressively mundane surface, and there are a few surprises in store. Fans of Stand by Me and the like will find much to enjoy. Read more...