Gargoyles: Stories - Softcover

Gaston, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887847765 ISBN 13: 9780887847769

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2009

Synopsis

In this remarkable collection, Bill Gaston crafts his fiction around the idea of the gargoyle the concrete representation of extremes of human emotions. This marvelous, riotous, Rabelaisian world contains gargoyles that are physical manifestations of the disfigurements and contortions to which human beings subject themselves. Each of the collection's 12 stories has a strange and unique guardian spirit whose sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent presence informs the characters and their actions. A boy struggles with self-image and the need to fit in. A grieving parent tries to prevent others from making his mistake; tragedy ensues. A vengeful son settles a score with mom and her new lover. Other stories focus on familial delight, as well as discord in the lives of an over-the-top artist, a drunken uncle, and a bitter writer. All show one of Canada’s finest writers at the top of his form.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Gaston is the author of several works of fiction, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Mount Appetite, the Governor General's Literary Award finalist Gargoyles, and the acclaimed novels, Sointula, The Good Body, and The Order of Good Cheer. Gaston was the inaugural recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada Timothy Findley Award, for a distinguished body of work. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Review:

...vivid, unpredictable, and fascinating. (Toronto Star 2006-09-01)

[A] compelling and highly original collection. (Quill & Quire 2006-09-01)

...Gargoyles is an example of what short stories can and should achieve: a resilient compactness of prose that rely on nebulous but defined parameters for impact. (Pique News Magazine 2006-12-01)

As always, Gaston's social consciousness is leavened by humour - sometimes gut splitting, often wry, never dull. Close reading and re-reading reward: what eludes in dark water emerges bright and new. (Daily Gleaner 2006-11-18)

Canada has produced few writers as astonishingly original as Bill Gaston...Gargoyles never fails to entertain, enlighten and dazzle. (Kenneth J. Harvey Globe and Mail 2006-09-01)

Every word...is precise and perfect. He layers so much in 15 pages that, once you've finished a story, you feel as if you've absorbed a novels worth of thoughts and images. (Now Magazine 2006-09-01)

Funny, distressing, scary, deeply human. (Elizabeth Hay Globe and Mail 2006-09-01)

Whether his characters are twelve-year-old boys or eighty-year-old women, he gets into their skin and pulls us along with him. It is this looking-out from the eyes of someone else that is among Gaston's greatest accomplishments as a storyteller....Besides creating believable characters, Gaston is astonishingly fast at establishing the world each story is set in--an important skill considering how different each story's world is. (subTerrain 2007-02-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0887847765
• ISBN 13: 9780887847769
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256