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Title details for The Journey Prize Stories 25 by Various - Available

The Journey Prize Stories 25

The Best of Canada's New Writers

#25 in series

by Various
ebook
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“This year, eighty-one different stories battled for our affections, ranging in content from a post-apocalyptic suburb coping with rumours of cannibalism, to a movie theatre in Mauritius where dreams of a better future flicker onscreen, to a mattress store where a long-lasting friendship threatens to come undone. For each of us, it was a chance to partake in a process that now stretches back twenty-five years, a sneak peak at authors who – in the future – will likely become favourites.”
—Miranda Hill, Mark Medley, and Russell Wangersky (from their Introduction)
 
Among the stories this year: Brimming with restless energy, Doretta Lau’s “How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?” is a sometimes provocative portrait of adolescent angst and rebellion set among a gang of “dragoons” growing up in Vancouver. It vividly brings to life a twenty-first-century culture clash and illuminates the struggles, and alienation, of Chinese youth – whether from Hong Kong or the Mainland – now living in “Lotus Land.” Doretta Lau’s story positively hums, the language a well-shaken cocktail of influences ranging from hip-hop and Asian cinema to Chinese history and “the slang of the West.” As vibrant and colourful as graffiti.
Well-timed and yet still carefully fractured enough to be jarring, Eliza Robertson’s “My Sister Sang” is a marvel of unexpected directions and sharp edges. A deftly-told story of two eavesdroppers, one a linguist, the other, professionally tuned to acoustics, who listen – over and over – to every scrap of a tragedy. Even with the distance and detachment of its characters from the centre of its disaster, there is no easy peace, no mere scientific examination of cause and effect: this is writing as carefully crafted and fine as pastry, with thin, perfect layers where every line serves to strengthen the rest.
Naben Ruthnum’s “Cinema Rex” is as rich and visual as the films at its centre, which play on the new movie screen in one neighbourhood of Mauritius in the 1950s. The author beautifully draws the connections between the changing community, inundated by Hollywood and after-school English lessons, and a season of vital shifts for three friends transitioning out of boyhood. Full of heady sensory details, Ruthnum’s deft observations of family and class interactions create an entire world of established histories and hierarchies, even though the reader is only privy to a sliver of these stories.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Journey Prize

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 8, 2013

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780771047374

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780771047374
      • File size: 2083 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2013
      A welcome collection of short fiction from the winners of the Journey Prize, Canada's take on something like the Pushcart (though with a nicer purse). Now in its 25th year, the Journey Prize is awarded annually to "an emerging writer of distinction," with $10,000 to the winner. Moreover, the annual prize story volume is considered the "most prestigious annual fiction anthology in the country." Certainly, this anniversary collection, judged by past prizewinner Hill, along with National Post Books Editor Medley and novelist Wangersky, shows why. Noting that the submissions are read blind, making the Journey "as pure a prize as you'll find in Canada," the editors lead off with a decidedly fugitive piece by Laura Legge, which closes with a lovely bit of poetry: "I feel I could float with the tide, lay back and let it move me, like a sprig of sea kelp, like a caravel skimming some long corridor of blue, easily, with the sun as its sentinel." That would do Leonard Cohen proud, and readers will be eager to hear more from her. Another selection, by Natalie Morrill, takes an original if typographically challenging approach to depicting voices speaking at once (three parallel columns, one for each voice present), and voices spoken in crisis at that. In another, Doretta Lau nicely subverts ethnic stereotypes over the battlefield of a communal meal: "I looked around at the table. Yellow Peril was slurping up her noodles with gusto. Riceboy was shoveling rice into his mouth like a champion competitive eater, while Suzie Wrong took big gulps of her drink." There's not a dud here, though, it being Canada, there's plenty of snow (for which see especially Jay Brown's well-observed story "The Egyptians"). Many American readers know altogether too little about what's happening to the north. And, to judge by this volume, what's happening in Canada is all to the good.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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