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Sebastian Ritscher
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THAT TIME I LOVED YOU

Carrianne Leung

Tensions that have lurked beneath the surface of a shiny new subdivision rise up, in new fiction from the author of the Toronto Book Award - shortlisted The Wondrous Woo.
"1979: This was the year the parents in my neighbourhood began killing themselves." From this opening line, That Time I Loved You keeps readers hooked until the very end. Reminiscent of Mona Awad's 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, the novel reveals children trying to make sense of a new environment that their parents cannot explain to them. The adults are lost when they discover that their idyllic new suburban landscape is home to dark secrets, and is not the haven that they thought it was.

Carrianne Leung, through the perspectives of multiple characters from different ethnic and social backgrounds, explores what happens behind closed doors in a community of strangers struggling to relate to each other. Always returning to the voice of young June, the adolescent daughter of Chinese-immigrant parents, That Time I Loved You is seen through the eyes of a sensitive and watchful child who is figuring out a world she doesn't yet understand. With dark humour June observes death and endures betrayal and heartbreak, all to the sound track of 1970s pop music, as she prepares to venture out in to the wider world.

The suburbs of the 1970s promised to be heaven on earth - new houses, new status, happiness guaranteed. But in a subdivision populated by newcomers from all over the world, a series of sudden catastrophic events reveals that not everyone's dreams come true. Moving from house to house, Carrianne Leung explores the inner lives behind the tidy front gardens and picture-perfect houses. Through June and her neighbours, Leung depicts the fine line where childhood meets the realities of adult life and examines, with insight and sharp prose, how difficult it is to be true to ourselves at any age.

Carrianne Leung's first novel, The Wondrous Woo (Inanna Publications) was a finalist for the 2014 City of Toronto Book Award. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto and lives in Toronto.
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Book

Published 2018-03-27 by HarperCollins

Book

Published 2018-03-27 by HarperCollins

Comments

That Time I Loved You is amazing, heart-breaking, probing, tender; apocalyptic, in the truest sense. With an activist's compassion and a poet's eye, Leung challenges everything we knew (or thought we knew) about the suburbs. Behind the facade of tidy houses, manicured lawns, and well-behaved dogs live characters imprisoned by sadness and despair, battling racism and social injustice, yet relentless in their pursuit of love. Leung writes with such generosity, which is part of what makes this the best coming-of-age story I've read in a long time.

Heartbreaking. . . . Leung's stories lift the veiled curtain of late 1970s suburbia to reveal the sadness and isolation of its residents. . . . Written in the tradition of Alice Munro and Jhumpa Lahiri, Leung's debut story collection marks the career of a writer to watch.

This is a compact gem of a collection of linked short stories.... that dazzles with its subtly, that befriends its reader in the dead of night, that leaves a lasting impression and a new way of understanding people and the world

Carrianne Leung captures Scarborough's early years: Toronto author talks growing up in a 70s subdivision, covert racism and the perennial downtown vs. suburbs debate Read more...

Every portrait is eloquent and lingers in your mind.

With compassion and masterful storytelling, Leung walks us past neat front yards and deep into kitchens, bedrooms and basements, to show us that life in the suburbs isn't as tidy as it might seem. "That Time I Loved You is about children losing innocence and adults burying pain, and yet is also a hopeful portrayal of friendship, kinship and community.

At turns poignant, sad, haunting and funny, Carrianne Leung's That Time I Loved You captures life on three "sister streets" in culturally and racially diverse late-1970s Toronto. This necessary web of stories shows us immigrant Toronto as we have rarely seen it. I felt myself made present.

THAT TIME I LOVED YOU is a Finalist for the 2018 City of Toronto Book Award! Statement of the jury for the City of Toronto Book Awards: "In That Time I Loved You, Carrianne Leung introduces us to a multitude of intertwined, felt and feeling lives in a Scarborough suburb. Her short stories are crafted like houses, separated by chain link fence. We dedicate ourselves to knowing each character, their hidden, fully inhabited interior; only to glimpse them again later in vivid, green glimpses, painfully undone. Probing love, loneliness, social injustice and the wish to be revealed, her characters stammer and blurt, say the wholly unexpected, their lives tender and brave on the tips of their tongues."

In That Time I loved You, Carrianne Leung reveals a suburb on the cusp of change, families whose names are no longer Smith and Watson, but rather Chow and Da Silva. Leung illuminates with clear unassuming prose and much compassion, a neighbourhood that is complex, disturbing, funny, sad and very human.

That Time I Loved You is heady, necessary writing from one of the most talented and socially engaged authors of our time. Read this, and you'll encounter within those quiet streets with buzzing streetlamps their true madness and rare beauty.