People Park - Softcover

Malla, Pasha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 088784216X ISBN 13: 9780887842160

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2012

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book

It's the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven's illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.

People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O'Connor were resting on his shoulders. You've never read anything quite like People Park.

About this title

About the Author

Pasha Malla’s first novel, People Park, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book. His first collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method, a Globe and Mail and National Post book of the year, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is the winner of an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, two National Magazine Awards, and has twice had stories included in the Journey Prize anthology. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Review

Written in breathless prose, it’s oddball fun, and Malla proves himself as a writer who never takes the easy way out. (Mike Doherty National Post 2012-06-02)

[People Park] unfolds a unique and fully realized fictional universe in which the author explores themes of displacement, isolation, and reunification with flashes of dark humour. (Shawn Syms Quill and Quire 2012-07-01)

... an imaginative feat ... (Michael Hingston Georgia Straight 2012-07-05)

... every sentence [is] a thrill ... [in People Park] we get a frightening picture of ourselves. (Eric Boodman Montreal Gazette 2012-07-06)

People Park is a zany and entertaining yarn ... more than a worthy followup to The Withdrawal Method; it's a merry microcosm. (Dave Williamson Winnipeg Free Press 2012-07-07)

People Park is an ambitious and complex novel, impressively rendered and fantastic to read. (Matthew J. Trafford National Post 2012-07-06)

When I got to the last page, I wanted to flip the thing over and start right back at the beginning. I can’t think of a better testament to the pleasure of reading a novel. (Suzannah Showler AV Club 2012-07-10)

People Park is reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart or George Saunders ... vividly imagined ... (J. C. Sutcliffe Globe and Mail 2012-07-13)

The novel is a cacophony of comedy and heartbreak, magical realism and satiric wit, made melodically whole through Malla’s deft prose. (Yutaka Dirks Briarpatch Magazine 2012-10-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 088784216X
• ISBN 13: 9780887842160
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 484