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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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THIS SIDE OF SAD
For fans of Joan Didion and Sheila Heti, and reminiscent of Jenny Offill's The Department of Speculation , THIS SIDE OF SAD is a provocative and piercing novel that lingers in mind and heart.
Maslen is married to James, who has a breakdown after Maslen recovers from a serious illness. Months later, he walks away from home and into the woods where he is killed. Did he meet his death, or greet it?
This is Karen Smythe's haunting debut novel, THIS SIDE OF SAD.
The book begins with an enda violent death--and then it looks back, becoming an a-chronological re-telling of a woman's fractured past. In this way Maslen, who is emotionally elusive at the outset, examines the many passions and alliances that have shaped her life.
Maslen's thoughts rove across time in response to internal and external events; the flow of the episodes makes intuitive sense and creates an investigative pulse that brings the novel to life.
Meditative, philosophical, confessional, elegiac: This Side of Sad is a many-sided novel. It is about the disintegration of a marriage, but it's also about relationship between memory and identity; the enduring colloquy between the living and the dead; the varieties and limitations of love; and how we find meaning in the random architecture of despair and joy that makes and unmakes our lives.
Karen Smythe is the author of Stubborn Bones, a collection of short fiction (Polestar/Raincoast Books, 2001). Karen's stories have appeared in several literary publications including Grain, Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review, Gaspereau Review, and Water Studies: New Voices in Maritime Fiction.While living in Halifax, she guest-edited the Michael Ondaatje issue of Essays on Canadian Writing and served as the fiction editor of the Pottersfield Portfolio. Figuring Grief, her ground-breaking monograph on Gallant and Munro (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992), is still in print and widely cited. Karen is at work on her second novel.
This is Karen Smythe's haunting debut novel, THIS SIDE OF SAD.
The book begins with an enda violent death--and then it looks back, becoming an a-chronological re-telling of a woman's fractured past. In this way Maslen, who is emotionally elusive at the outset, examines the many passions and alliances that have shaped her life.
Maslen's thoughts rove across time in response to internal and external events; the flow of the episodes makes intuitive sense and creates an investigative pulse that brings the novel to life.
Meditative, philosophical, confessional, elegiac: This Side of Sad is a many-sided novel. It is about the disintegration of a marriage, but it's also about relationship between memory and identity; the enduring colloquy between the living and the dead; the varieties and limitations of love; and how we find meaning in the random architecture of despair and joy that makes and unmakes our lives.
Karen Smythe is the author of Stubborn Bones, a collection of short fiction (Polestar/Raincoast Books, 2001). Karen's stories have appeared in several literary publications including Grain, Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review, Gaspereau Review, and Water Studies: New Voices in Maritime Fiction.While living in Halifax, she guest-edited the Michael Ondaatje issue of Essays on Canadian Writing and served as the fiction editor of the Pottersfield Portfolio. Figuring Grief, her ground-breaking monograph on Gallant and Munro (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992), is still in print and widely cited. Karen is at work on her second novel.
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Book
Published by Goose Lane |