Bøger udgivet af Coach House Books

CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023THE TORONTO STAR 'MUST READ, HANDS DOWN BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR''Cat Person' meets Station Eleven in this apocalyptic depiction of toxic masculinity. An unnamed man is spending the evening with his ex-girlfriend. She's obsessed with the 1956 John Wayne classic The Searchers, and she recounts the story as a way for them to talk about their histories, their families, maybe even their relationship. But as he gets more drunk and belligerent, she gets more and more uncomfortable with him being in her home. And then, two days later, a mysterious catastrophic event befalls Toronto, and our protagonist must trek across the city to find Melanie. His quest spirals into increasing violence, bloodshed, and hallucinations as he moves west through the confusion and chaos of the city. Using the tropes of both the Western and the disaster movie, Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys looks at the violence of our contemporary masculinity, and its deep roots in shaping our culture. A suspenseful and thought-provoking evocation of our current moment. "Ask the right questions and a conversation about the movies becomes a conversation about your life, family, past, and everything you value: Aaron Tucker's novel, which starts chatty before turning deeply, unexpectedly inward, grasps the ceaseless, sometimes terrible relevance of violence and troubling art." - Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time"In Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys, Aaron Tucker refuses the easy projections of masculinity from film history. Instead he gallops into the screen to sift out how drama collaborates with the bloodiest of truths. That this novel shifts from dialogical treatise into a thriller proves that Tucker is well on his way to stealing the weird fiction mantle away from Don DeLillo." - Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes and Little Threats"Sad, smart, innocent and wise. A relentless retelling of a movie and a life, full of hope, if there is any." - John Haskell, author of The Complete Ballet: A Fictional Essay in Five Acts

CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 202349th SHELF EDITORS' PICK FOR JUNE 2023When a family is forced to return to the mother’s childhood home, she seeks meaning in her ancestral roots and the violent beauty of the natural world.Fleeing the city at the beginning of the pandemic, two families are cramped together in a small century-old country house. Winter seeps through the walls, the wallpaper is peeling, and mice make their nest in the piano. Without phones or internet, they turn to the outdoors, where a new language unfolds, a language of fireflies and clover. The five children explore nature and its treasures, while our narrator, Anaïs, turns to the eccentric neighbours and her own family history to find peace and meaning in the middle of her life.To the Forest is a field guide to a quieter life, a call to return to the places where we can reweave the threads of memory, where existence waltzes with death, where we can recapture what it means to be alive.

Boy meets Girl, Boy marries Girl, and years later Boy mysteriously disappears in this Gordon Lish-style novel. The boy and the girl have been married for decades, mostly getting along as they go about their lives. But one day, like thousands of people around the world, the boy vanishes, and the girl is left to wait, wonder, and worry. Will he return? Who might she be if she moves on without him?This is a world where every morning the cat gets fed and the coffee gets made, but also one in which God sometimes lives in the garage - she likes to sleep on the freezer - and gigantic words can fall from the sky. Not Anywhere, Just Not cracks open the small dramas of our lives to show the dread and wonder inside all of us. "Ken Sparling is a brilliant writer and this book, like all his books, is a beauty. Sparling chronicles the times I fear most-the moments of loneliness, of loss, of ennui-and somehow makes them seem worthwhile, even wondrous, and often flat-out funny. His work makes life look livable, which makes him a wizard to me." - Derek McCormack, author of Castle Faggot"A gorgeous rendition of the domestic uncanny, Not Anywhere, Just Not is an ostensibly quiet book that slowly and carefully unnerves and unsettles you--both because of its precise swapping out of reality and because of just how familiar it so often seems. All of us, Sparling seems to say, are on the verge of vanishing at any moment." - Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

For fans of Ducks, Newburyport and Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances, a day-in-the-life of a plumber whose troubles are all coming to a head.In an addictive, interior-monologue lyric novel, we meet Joseph. Back on the job after a long leave, he's not at all sure he'll make it through the day.Bad thoughts keep creeping in. He believes that his son, suffering from a condition in which he believes someone close to him has been replaced by an imposter, has tried to kill his wife. And that he'll try again. And that his wife is planning to leave him.Meanwhile, he's fixing a sink for his wife's friend.Insignificance unfurls over the course of a single day. Placing the reader inside the head of the struggling Joseph, it works double time, as a portrait of the uncertainty and awkwardness of one vulnerable man and his relationship with the world, and also as a tense, emotional, and gripping drama.In this deeply human and highly inventive story, we have a novel that portrays the thoughts of one working man on his own terms, without artifice or condescension. James Clammer pries open the head of a plumber to reveal the portrait of a fracturing mind taking us closer and closer to the edge."e;Hands down the best novel about a plumber changing a water tank and, incidentally, dealing with matters of grave and threatening existential weight I have ever read."e; Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books"e;In this short and powerful novel author James Clammer places readers inside the mind of Joe Forbes, a delightfully perceptive, middle-aged plumber who is trying to recover from a mental breakdown precipitated by his son's criminal conviction. Joe is very much an 'everyman,' yet his way of looking at the world and his circumstances is far from ordinary. With writing full of wit and sensitivity, Clammer's blue-collar hero goes back to work, longing to once again be strong, healthy, and confident fully engaged within a society that stigmatizes weakness and mental illness. Insignificance is an absolute marvel, and one of the best books that I've read in quite some time."e; Lori Feathers, Interabang Books"e;A brilliant look at family, mental health, and mid-life, Insignificance is a marvel. Tender, moving, and written with subtle humour, Clammer's novel takes the reader through a single day in the life of Joe Forbes, reluctant plumber and anguished father. A superb novel that hits all the right notes. I couldn't put it down."e; Mark Haber, bookseller at Brazos Bookstore and author of Reinhardt's Garden

The Laws of the Skies, by the same author and translator, was highlighted in the New York Times Summer Reading feature and given a starred review in Publishers Weekly.For fans of Kafkaesque, dystopian literature.

A fresh take on the romance novel from the Giller Prizewinning author of Fifteen DogsFrom their first meeting, it was clear that Gwen and Tancred were meant to be together. But, as we know, the course of true love never did run smooth.Gwen's mother, intuiting that her daughter is in love, gives her a magic ring that has been passed down through endless generations of mothers and daughters. This ring grants its wearer the opportunity to change three things about her beloved. Like all blessings, this may also be a curse.Ring turns the literary romance upside down and shakes out its pockets. It's a playful meditation on the past, on magic, on race, on honour, on faith, and, yes, on love.Following on the heels of Pastoral, Fifteen Dogs, The Hidden Keys, and Days by Moonlight, Ring completes Alexis's Quincunx, a group of five genre-bending, philosophically sophisticated, and utterly delightful novels.';A great novel doesn't try to answer questions, but, like Days by Moonlight, complicates them. ' The Globe and Mail on Days by Moonlight';This imaginative travelogue will amuse readers even as it raises weightier issues. ' Publishers Weekly on Days by Moonlight';I'm far from being a dog person, but as a book person I loved this smart, exuberant fantasy from start to finish. ' The Guardian on Fifteen Dogs';A clever exploration of our essence, communication, and how our societies are organized. ' Kirkus Reviews on Fifteen Dogs"e;Ring raises questions about love, marriage, fidelity, and the divine."e; Canadian Writers Abroad

It's just another boring summer for our teenaged narrator until Barbra arrives. An Ethiopian Jew, Barbra was brought to Israel at age five, a part of Operation Solomon, and now our narrator's well-intentioned father has brought her, as a teen, to their home for the summer. But Barbra isn't the docile and grateful orphan they expect, and soon our narrator, terrified of her and drawn to her in equal measure, finds himself immersed in compulsive psychosexual games with her, as she binge-drinks and lies to his family. Things go terribly wrong, and Barbra flees. But seven years later, as our narrator is getting his life back on track, with a new girlfriend and a master's degree in Holocaust Studies underway, Barbra shows up at our narrator's house once again, her "e;spiritual teacher"e; in tow, and our narrator finds his politics, and his sanity, back in question.Queen Solomon is another masterful take on the politics of sex, race, and power from the author of the Believer Book Awardwinning Maidenhead.

It's 1971. Hal Sachs runs a used bookstore. Business isn't so great, and the store is in a part of Toronto that's about to be paved over with a behemoth expressway. And then Hal meets Lily Klein, an activist schoolteacher who'll do just about anything to stop the highway. It's love at first sight. Until it isn't. And then Hal vanishes. A half-century later, Hal's nephew, Aitch, waits for his baby to be born as he tries to piece together facts and fictions about Hal's disappearance. Splitsville is a diamond-cut love letter to a city whose defining moment was to say 'no way' to a highway, and a look at the obsessions that carry down through a family.

Adults don't talk about the business of doing our business. We work on one assumption: the world of public bathrooms is problem- and politics-free. No Place To Go: Answering the Call of Nature in the Urban Jungle reveals the opposite is true.No Place To Go is a toilet tour from London to San Francisco to Toronto and beyond. From pay potties to deserted alleyways, No Place To Go is a marriage of urbanism, social narrative, and pop culture that shows the ways momentous and mockable public bathrooms just don't work. Like, for the homeless, who, faced with no place to go sometimes literally take to the streets. (Ever heard of a municipal poop map?) For people with invisible disabilities, such as Crohn's disease, who stay home rather than risk soiling themselves on public transit routes. For girls who quit sports teams because they don't want to run to the edge of the pitch to pee. Celebrities like Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen have protested bathroom bills that will stomp on the rights of transpeople. And where was Hillary Clinton after she arrived back to the stage late after the first commercial break of the live-televised Democratic leadership debate in December 2015? Stuck in a queue for the women's bathroom.Peel back the layers on public bathrooms and it's clear many more people want for good access than have it. Public bathroom access is about cities, society, design, movement, and equity. The real question is: Why are public toilets so crappy?

Whatever the underlying motivesbe they love, financial security, or mere masochismthe fact is that getting involved in a romantic partnership is emotionally, morally, and even politically fraught. In Hard To Do, Kelli Mara Korducki turns a Marxist lens on the relatively short history of romantic love, tracing how the myth of economic equality between men and women has transformed the ways women conceive of domestic partnership. With perceptive, reported insights on the ways marriage and divorce are legislated, the rituals of twentieth-century courtship, and contemporary practices for calling it off, Korducki reveals that, for all women, choosing to end a relationship is a radical action with very limited cultural precedent.Kelli Mara Korducki is a journalist and cultural critic. Her byline has appeared frequently in the Globe and Mail and National Post, as well as in the New Inquiry, NPR, the Walrus, Vice, and the Hairpin. She was nominated for a 2015 Canadian National Magazine Award for "e;Tiny Triumphs,"e; a 10,000-word meditation on the humble hot dog for Little Brother Magazine. A former editor-in-chief of the popular daily news blog Torontoist, Korducki is based in Brooklyn and Toronto.

Praise for The Search for Heinrich Schlgel:"e;Martha Baillie has written a timeless masterpiece. Every page is full of haunting wonderment. Truly, I know of no novel quite like itit's a blessing. The Search for Heinrich Schlgel has dreamlike locutions, it tells the most unusual tale, and it brings the margins of the world to us with photographic immediacy."e; Howard Norman, author of Next Life Might Be KinderIn If Clara, nobody stands on firm ground. Daisy, a writer confined to her home, her leg in a cast from hip to ankle, receives a parcel containing the manuscript of a novel about a Syrian refugee and is asked to pose as its writer. Julia, the curator at the Kleinzahler Gallery, has no idea that her sister, Clara, has written a novel. However, she does know that Clara suffers from a debilitating mental illness, is unpredictable, and lapses easily into hostility. Maurice's life is changed by an art installation involving a pair of binoculars welded to the wall through which visitors are invited to observe passersby outside. An ultralight aircraft's collision with a quiet lawn brings them all together. If Clara explores the emotional weight of friendship, the complexity of family, and people inextricably entwined.Martha Baillie's most recent novel, The Search for Heinrich Schlgel (Tin House), received wide acclaim and was an O Magazine editors' pick. She was lives in Toronto.

Dr. Edith Vane is nicely ensconced at the University of Inivea and is about to see her dissertation on Beulah Crump-Withers published. All should be well. Except for her broken washing machine, her backstabbing fellow professors, a cutthroat new dean and the fact that the sentient and malevolent Crawley Hall has decided it wants them all out.

A lively examination of why the modern eulogy should rest in peace.

"e;Bock's language crackles with the energy of a Qubcois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic."e; The New Yorker, on AtavismsA young, floundering author meets Robert "e;Baloney"e; Lacerte, an older, marginal poet who seems to own nothing beyond his unwavering certainty. Over the course of one summer evening, Lacerte recounts his unrelenting quest for poetry, which has taken him from Quebec's Boreal forests to South America to East Montreal, where he seems poised to disappear without a trace. But as the blocked writer discovers, Lacerte might just be full of it.Maxime Raymond Bock lives in Montreal, Quebec. Atavisms, his first book, won the Prix Adrienne-Choquette.Pablo Strauss, who translated Atavisms, lives in Quebec City, Quebec.

We live in an "e;adultitarian"e; state, where the rules are based on very adult priorities and understandings of reality. Young people are disenfranchised and powerless; they understand they're subject to an authoritarian regime, whether they buy into it or not. But their unique perspectives also offer incredible potential for engagement and innovation.Cultural planner and performance director Darren O'Donnell has been collaborating with children for years through his theatre company, Mammalian Diving Reflex; their most well-known piece, Haircuts by Children (exactly what it sounds like) has been performed internationally. O'Donnell suggests that that working with children in the cultural industries in a manner that maintains a large space for their participation can be understood as a pilot for a vision of a very different role for young people in the world one that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child considers a "e;new social contract."e;Seen and Heard is a practical proposal for the inclusion of children in as many realms as possible, not only as an expression of their rights, but as a way to intervene in the world and to disrupt the stark economic inequalities perpetuated by the status quo. Deeply practical and wildly whimsical,Seen and Heardmight actually make total sense.Darren O'Donnell is an urban cultural planner, novelist, essayist, playwright, director, designer, performer, and the artistic director of the Mammalian Diving Reflex theater company. O'Donnell currently resides in Toronto, Ontario.

YOLT explores two artists¿ lives before and after transitions: from female to male, and from near-dead to alive.

In shutting out shut-eye in favour of productivity, have we created an insomnia culture?

Enciphered in a bacterium, The Xenotext is the world's first living poem.