"Better Living through Plastic Explosives," a book of short stories by Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner brings to its readers a dark, satiric picture of Vancouver just a few years into the future.
"I would say it is a portrait of Vancouver, my Vancouver," said Gartner, who was short-listed for Canada's Giller Prize for the collection, published recently in the United States. "I've created my own kind of mythology, set in the near future, of how I view the city itself.
"I map different psychic and demographic spaces, but telling the stories I like to tell, which are dark satire."
In one, "The Adopted Chinese Daughters' Rebellion," Canadian parents push adopted offspring into Buddhism and feng shui, while the girls just want to be Canadian. "Once, We Were Swedes" features IKEA product names as a loving, erotic language.
Typical in many ways is "The Summer of the Flesh Eater," the tale of a cultural collision between the vegan locavores of one particular Vancouver cul-de-sac and the truck-driving carnivore who arrives in their midst, serving up huge slabs of meat he describes as "bodacious."
Like many of her tales, Gartner said, it began with a concept - the idea of the diff
The Beguiling
It was only when he came to in the hospital three days later to find his hands amputated that Zoltán recalled what movie the whole sordid incident had reminded him of: But in The Beguiled, a bizarre Civil War gothic, Clint Eastwood's horndog Yankee soldier who wakes up to discover both his legs missing got what audiences thought he deserved: the Valkyrie-like wrath of woman scorned.
I remember reading Zsuzsi Gartner's previous book of short stories (Better Living Through Plastic Explosives) and loving it, so was excited to see what she would do with the novel form here in The Beguiling; in my experience, authors don't always excel equally at both formats. And Gartner pulls off a slick trick here: By conceiving of a fascinating and original frame story, the main character meets a bunch of other people who essentially tell her a wide range of beguiling short stories, and we readers get to have our cake and eat it too. And to be sure, the frame story felt increasingly tricksy for tricks' sake to me as it went along, but it eventually got to a place that proves the entire tale couldn't have been told any other way. Funny, bizarre, thoughtful, and j
Zsuzsi Gartner
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth, editor of the award-winning Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. Her second book, Better Living through Plastic Explosives, was a Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist. She has won National Magazine Awards for Fiction, most recently in Zsuzsi has taught MFA students at the University of British Columbia, and mentored fiction & non-fiction writers through the Banff Centre’s writing programs. She was the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland for , and is a member of the / Expert Advisory Group on Canadian culture for the Minister of Heritage. Zsuzsi created Writers Adventure Camp in and lives in Vancouver.
Photo credit: Lori McNulty
Zsuzsi Gartner
Zsuzsi Gartner (nacido el 4 de mayo de en Winnipeg) es un autor y periodista canadiense. Escribe regularmente para The Globe and Mail, el Vancouver Sun, Quill & Quire, Canadian Business y Western Living.
Biografía
Gartner nació el 4 de mayo de en Winnipeg y se mudó a Calgary cuando era niño. Obtuvo una Licenciatura en Ciencias Políticas en la Universidad de Calgary, luego recibió una licenciatura con honores en periodismo de la Universidad Carleton en Ottawa y una Maestría en Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Columbia Británica en Vancouver, donde reside actualmente.
Gartner comenzó su carrera como periodista de periódicos y revistas para varias publicaciones, incluidas Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night. i>, Pluma & Quire, The Georgia Straight, Western Living y Canadian Business. Ha trabajado como editora senior en Saturday Night y editora de libros para The Georgia Straight.
También es escritora de cuentos, que han aparecido en varias publicaciones. Publicó una colección de estas historias, Todas las chicas ansiosas de la Tierra en
Gartner ha sido escritor resident
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