Malarky - Softcover

Schofield, Anakana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1926845382 ISBN 13: 9781926845388

Publisher: Biblioasis, 2012

Synopsis

Winner of the 2012 Amazon.ca First Novel Award

"A caustic, funny and moving fantasia of an Irish mammy going round the bend." —Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM

Our Woman will not be sunk by what life’s about to serve her. She's caught her son doing unmentionable things out by the barn. She's been accosted by Red the Twit, who claims to have done things with Our Woman’s husband that could frankly have gone without mentioning. And now her son’s gone and joined the army, and Our Woman has found a young fella to do unmentionable things with herself, just so she might understand it all... Malarky is the story of an Irish mother forced to look grief in the eye, and of a wife come face-to-face with the mad agony of longing. Comic, moving, eccentric, and spare, Anakana Schofield’s debut novel introduces a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction.

Amazon.ca Best Book Of 2012 Editors' Pick

Shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

New Statesman Read-All-About-It Selection For 2012

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, 2012

Salon.com What-To-Read Award-Winner, 2012

Top Five Book Pick, Chatelaine

iTunes Canada Best Of 2012 Fiction Pick

Largehearted Boy Favorite Novel Of 2012

Next Best Book Blog Top 3, 2012

About this title

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for Malarky

"Good writing and dark wit always excite me and they come together thrillingly in this book. It has a quiet grip on the strangeness of the interior and exterior worlds of love and politics and their inextricability. I delighted in the writing and the scope - macro and microscopic." Jenny Diski

"Malarky spins and glitters like a coin flipped in the air--now searingly tragic, now blackly funny. The language is joyful and exuberant, the characters thoughtful and deeply felt. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant." Annabel Lyon
With Malarky, Anakana Schofield has delivered a character as extraordinary as Brecht’s Mother Courage, and a domestic situation that rivals Beckett’s Endgame for its stagnant and sorrowful absurdity.

Our Woman Philomena has just caught her son Jimmy in the barn with another man. She’s been accosted by Red the Twit, who energetically discloses the infidelities real, imagined, or in any event peculiar of Our Woman’s husband.

Swamped by a confusion she refuses to let overcome her, Philomena embarks on rural odyssey that skirts madness, passes through grief, and returns her to the remarkable resilience of spirit that will make Our Woman the character of the decade. Schofield’s wicked humour is everywhere apparent, and Malarky, brilliantly drawn in the cadences of contemporary Ireland, is an absolutely peerless tour-de-force.
Anakana Schofield is an Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, drama, essays, and literary criticism. She contributes to the London Review of Books, The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, the Globe & Mail, and the Vancouver Sun. She has lived in London and Dublin, and now resides in Vancouver. Malarky is her first novel.

About the Author

Anakana Schofield: Anakana Schofield is an Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. She contributes to the London Review of Books, The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, the Globe & Mail, and the Vancouver Sun. She has lived in London and Dublin, and now resides in Vancouver. Malarky is her first novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Biblioasis
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1926845382
• ISBN 13: 9781926845388
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 225