Losing It - Softcover

Cumyn, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771024894 ISBN 13: 9780771024894

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2002

Synopsis

Sometimes those who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who tweaks into florescence a long-harboured, secret sexual fetish. Then add to the mix the misadventures of his wife’s mentally failing mother, a shy night prowler, and Sienna’s explosive techno-junkie roommate. Poignant and gritty, tantalizingly erotic, Losing It is a high-wire act that plays out as a delicious blend of darkness and humour as it embraces the surprising emotional connections that are made in the midst of life’s madness.


From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Cumyn’s books include Man of Bone (1998), winner of the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award (as it was then known) and a finalist for the Trillium Book Award in 1999; Burridge Unbound (2000), which won the Ottawa Book Award and was a finalist for The Giller Prize; Losing It (2001); and The Sojourn (2003). His children’s book The Secret Life of Owen Skye was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature (2002).

Alan Cumyn lives in Ottawa.


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Sometimes those who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who tweaks into florescence a long-harboured, secret sexual fetish. Then add to the mix the misadventures of his wife's mentally failing mother, a shy night prowler, and Sienna's explosive techno-junkie roommate. Poignant and gritty, tantalizingly erotic, "Losing It is a high-wire act that plays out as a delicious blend of darkness and humour as it embraces the surprising emotional connections that are made in the midst of life's madness.

"From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

ose who have the most seem bent on throwing it away. Meet Bob Sterling, a comfortable middle-aged professor, a specialist in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, married to a former student with whom he has a young son. In the space of a week his family, marriage, career, sanity, and life are brought to the brink of ruin in the aftermath of a trip he makes with a student, the intense young poet Sienna Chu, who tweaks into florescence a long-harboured, secret sexual fetish. Then add to the mix the misadventures of his wife s mentally failing mother, a shy night prowler, and Sienna s explosive techno-junkie roommate. Poignant and gritty, tantalizingly erotic, Losing It is a high-wire act that plays out as a delicious blend of darkness and humour as it embraces the surprising emotional connections that are made in the midst of life s madness.


From the Hardcover edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771024894
• ISBN 13: 9780771024894
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376