Afleveringen
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We break ALL THE RULES (okay, there was only ever one rule, but still) with our season finale and the magnificent Andrea Warnerâs appearance on the podcast. Itâs one of my favourite writers talking about my favourite movie, and how it was foundational to Andreaâs own experience and inspired her compelling new homage/memoir/cultural-criticism hybrid, THE TIME OF MY LIFE: DIRTY DANCING, a book I adored.
Andrea talks about why Dirty Dancing is a project worth breaking the rules for, how Eleanor Bergstein was prescient in understanding the precarity of reproductive rights in America during the 1980s, her subversion in making an illegal abortion the centre of her screenplay, the filmâs best lines (I carried a watermelon?), how it models community care in action, how fantastic is its demonstration of enthusiastic consent, why itâs important to be honest in critiquing the pop culture we love, and Andrea also has a VERY controversial take on the iconic pop song that gave her book its title, and SO MUCH MORE!
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An engaging exploration into the enduring popularity of Dirty Dancing and its lasting themes of feminism, activism, and reproductive rights
When Dirty Dancing was released in 1987, it had already been rejected by producers and distributors several times over, and expectations for the summer romance were low. But then the film, written by former dancer Eleanor Bergstein and starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as a couple from two different worlds, exploded. Since then, Dirty Dancingâs popularity has never waned. The truth has always been that Dirty Dancing was never just a teen romance or a dance movie â it also explored abortion rights, class, and political activism, with a smattering of light crime-solving.
In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnnyâs chemistry, to Bergsteinâs political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The filmâs remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes â deeply feminist, sensitively written â that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.
ANDREA WARNER lives in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her books include Rise Up and Sing!: Power, Protest, and Activism in Music and Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography. Plus an expanded, updated, and retitled release of her first book is coming this fall 2024, now called We Oughta Know: How Celine, Shania, Alanis, and Sarah Ruled the '90s and Changed Music.
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Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection PEACOCKS OF INSTAGRAM, a book thatâs so great itâs got me accosting strangers in the street, and she came to our conversation with a very cool twist on the Bookspo format. Her Bookspo pick is Alice Munroâs short story âCorrieâ (which was included in her 2012 DEAR LIFE), which she used as inspiration for her own same-but-different story âRahel,â published in her collection.
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In our conversation, we talk about the possibilities offered to writers by constraints, about excellent titles, and less immediately-excellent titles named for characters (like Corrie and Rahel) who have to do the work to earn them, about writing bold and unapologetic women, how to create a story collection that functions as a whole, the delight of giving readers little Easter eggs, how reading Alice Munro carefully can be as useful as an MFA degree, and so much more!
Engrossing, witty yet devastating stories about diasporic Indians that deftly question what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.
An underappreciated coffee shop server haunted by her past attracts thousands of followers on social media with her peacock jewellery. A hotel housekeeper up against a world of gender and class inequity quietly gets revenge on her chauvinist boss. And a foster child, orphaned in an accident directly attributable to climate change, brings down her foster father, an oil lobbyist, in spectacular fashion.
With an intense awareness of privilege and the lack of it, the fourteen stunning stories in Peacocks of Instagram explore what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.
DEEPA RAJAGOPALAN won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event, and Arc. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US, and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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This episode of BOOKSPO is guaranteed to put a song in your head, as Michelle HĂ©bert tells me all about how revisiting Emma Donoghueâs 1997 story collection KISSING THE WITCH helped her discover solutions to problems she was facing in developing the characters in EVERYTHING LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC, her debut novel, which is out this week and pretty magic in its own right.
HĂ©bert tells me about the serendipitous way in which sheâs managed to build her own fairy tale library, about what Donoghueâs twists on familiar tales showed her about understanding difficult charactersâ motivations, about how female characters are so often adversarial and she wanted to do something different, the leap she took to couple her story of age-old curses and fairy tale tropes with a brilliant 1980sâ pop and rock soundtrack, about how maybe â80s pop culture and the world of fairy tales are not so incongruous after all, and names the most bonkers â80s song of all time, which turns up on her novelâs soundtrack.
About EVERY LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC:
Kitten Love's family is haunted by the memory of her teenaged aunt, Nerida, who died just days before Kitten's birth in 1970. Her mother, Queena, believes the family is cursed, and she's determined not to let disaster strike again. She won't let Kitten out of her sightâespecially to visit the beaches that surround the town. She's built a bomb shelter to protect against Soviet attack, and she's desperate to protect her husband, Stubby, from the fatal and mysterious Love Heart.
Kitten thinks she knows how to defeat their curse: magic. But when protection spells and clues from tarot cards aren't enough to save Stubby, Kitten turns her back on the things that make her life magical, and Queena turns her back on reality. She preserves everything as it was the day Stubby died in 1987âfrom the gold shag rug in the bathroom to the Duran Duran posters in Kitten's room. Kitten, herself, is forbidden to change.
Kitten tastes freedom when she falls in love and moves to British Columbia, but reinventing herself without the curse is harder than she expects. Tragedy and her own reliance on magical thinking eventually lead her back home to Queena, her brother Thom, and Aunt Bunny, who are equally stuck in their pasts. When tarot cards begin mysteriously showing up in her room, warning of a betrayal and encouraging an unlikely romance, she's certain someone is watching her. Could the heartbreak that almost destroyed Kitten's family be the very thing that helps them move on?
A darkly humorous family saga woven around tarot cards and a mixtape of '80s songs, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is a heady mix of music, ghosts, love, and nostalgia.
Michelle HĂ©bert grew up on the beaches and marshes of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, degrees in journalism and social work, and she studies tarot on the side. Her writing about mental health, social justice, and finding joy where it seems thereâs none to be had has appeared in Writerly magazine and in audio essays and short documentaries for CBC Radio. Her first book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict After the Halifax Explosion, was published in 2009. Michelle has lived across Canada but makes her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Miâkmaâki), with several cats, a dog, and her two adult children. You can find more of her writing (and pictures of her cats) at michellehebertwrites.com.
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Oh, wow, get ready for Adrienne Gruberâs amazing conversation about her fourth book, which is also her first essay collection, MONSTERS, MARTYRS AND MARIONETTES: ESSAYS ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, and the numerous threads that connect it to Sarah Mangusoâs memoir ONGOINGNESS: THE END OF A DIARY.
We talk about Gruberâs movement from poetry to prose, about the expansiveness of Mangusoâs memoir, the lack of expansiveness in motherhood in general, how both books talk about the postpartum haze, how parenthood does wild things with the concept of linear time, the surrealness of Gruberâs pandemic pregnancy, the gift of knowing you want children, what kinds of experiences need to be lived before than can be imagined, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a revelatory collection of personal essays that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight.
Documenting the birth and early life of her three daughters, Adrienne Gruber shares what it really means to use oneâs body to bring another life into the world and the lasting ramifications of that act on both parent and child. Each piece peers into the seemingly mundane to show us the mortal and emotional consequences of maternal bonds, placing experiences of âbeing a momâ within broader contextsâhistorical, literary, biological, and psychologicalâto speak to the ugly realities of parenthood often omitted from mainstream conversations.
Ultimately, these deeply moving, graceful essays force us to consider how close we are to death, even in the most average of moments, and how beauty is a necessary celebration amidst the chaos of being alive.
ADRIENNE GRUBER is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Reviewâs Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrainâs 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Eventâs 2020 creative non-fiction contest, and was the runner up in SubTerrainâs 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlĂ©lex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
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Okay, buckle up for this one. Robin Leflerâs sophmore novel NOT HOW I PICTURED IT is the shipwreck rom-com youâve been waiting for, a pitch perfect DREAM of a book whose wacky premise brings some real heft to the table. And Iâm so happy to be able to talk to her about NINE PERFECT STRANGERS, by Lianne Moriarty, the novel about a group of people isolated together at a wellness centre that inspired Lefler as she shaped her own book.
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Listen as Robin talks about what she loves about Moriartyâs hybridity, the challenges of writing a locked room mystery, how annoying it was to have to keep track of her charactersâ food rations, the real island with an actual castle that inspired the setting for her story, the surprising thing she learned about creating a plot outline (spoiler: it works!), and why it was important to her to write about characters who are still becoming themselves in their 40s.
About NOT HOW I PICTURED IT:
The OC meets The Unhoneymooners in this shipwreck romcom when the reunited cast of a hit show get stuck on a deserted island with nothing but their complete lack of survival skills, simmering drama, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good.
Agnes âNessâ Larkin has been out of the spotlight for twenty years since her quick departure from a starring role in a hit teen TV drama. When the show is tapped for a reboot, no one is more surprised than Ness that she signs on to rejoin the cast, leaving behind a normalâif not exactly thrillingâlife in Toronto. Also back for round two are Libby, Nessâs former best friend and soon to be makeup empire magnate, and Hayes, Nessâs one-that-got-away who has risen to A-list fame (and somehow gotten even better looking) in the years sheâs been gone.
When they set off for filming near the Bahamas, a storm leaves the seven actors and one production assistant stranded on a small island with only an abandoned, derelict mansion to wait out the storm. But when the weather clears and a new day risesâtheir boat is gone too.
Stuck in a bizarre, crumbling house on an uninhabited island with possibly the most useless survival group in history, Ness and her co-stars are forced to revisit a minefield of past transgressions and come to terms with the adults theyâve become as they work together to ride out the storm. Or at least pretend toâthey are actors, after all.
Interspersed with weather reports, fictional memoir excerpts, a dating profile and Perez-Hilton-esque blog posts, Not How I Pictured It is a rollicking novel of delightful absurdity, pithy dialogue, and no shortage of heart.
ROBIN LEFLER grew up near Toronto and (briefly) pursued an ill-fated career in equine massage therapy before stumbling into the world of robotics and tech sales. Not How I Pictured It is her second novel. Her first, Reasonable Adults, was published in 2022. Robin Lefler still lives in her hometown with her family and two very needy canines.
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Today Iâm thrilled to be bringing you my conversation with award-winning writer Leslie Shimotakahara about her new novel SISTERS OF THE SPRUCE, set during World War One in Haida Gwaii (then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) and loosely inspired by her grandmotherâs experiences, and how the spirit of Charlotte Bronteâs classic JANE EYRE both infuses the novelâs atmosphere and also helped inspire its protagonist.
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Leslie tells me about her long history as an avid reader, the story behind her memoir THE READING LIST (in which a wayward academic learns to love reading for pleasure again), how she first came upon JANE EYRE, what it felt like to encounter the novel again years later, and I also mention the fascinating bit of historical detail in SISTER OF THE SPRUCE that blew my mind!
About SISTERS OF THE SPRUCE:
World War One is in high gear. Fourteen-year-old Khya Terada moves with her family to a remote, misty inlet on Haida Gwaii, then the Queen Charlotte Islands, in northern British Columbia, known for its Sitka spruces. The Canadian government has passed an act to expedite logging of these majestic trees, desperately needed for the Alliesâ aircrafts in Europe. At a camp on the inlet, Khyaâs father, Sannosukeâa talented, daring logger with twenty years of experience since immigrating from Japanâassumes a position of leadership among the Japanese and Chinese workers.
But the arrival of a group of white loggers, eager to assert their authority, throws off balance the precarious life that Khya and her family have begun to establish. When a quarrel between Sannosuke and a white man known as âthe Captainâ escalates, leading to the betrayal of her older sister, Izzy, and humiliation for the family, Khya embarks on a perilous journey with her one friendâa half-Chinese sex worker, on the lam for her own reasonsâto track down the man and force him to take responsibility. Yet nothing in the forest is as it appears. Can they save Izzy from ruination and find justice without condemning her to a life of danger, or exposing themselves to the violence of an angry, power-hungry man?
Drawing on inspiration from her ancestorsâ stories and experiences, Shimotakahara weaves an entrancing tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival.
Leslie Shimotakahara's memoir, The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. She has written two critically acclaimed novels, After the Bloom and Red Oblivion. After the Bloom received a starred review from Booklist and is Bustleâs number one choice in â50 Books To Read With Your Book Club,â while Kirkus Review praised Red Oblivion for displaying âvirtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one familyâs tainted origins.â Her writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, among other anthologies and periodicals. She completed a PhD in English at Brown University. She and her husband live in Torontoâs west end.
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What a delight to bring you this conversation with Emily Austin about her beautiful and hilarious new novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, how some interesting feedback on her first novel inspired her to deepen her own understanding of love, and how ideas from bell hooksâ ALL ABOUT LOVE found their way into her fiction.
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Emily talks about her tendency to write her way through problems sheâs trying to solve, how sheâd never written about love before her debut fiction, why the protagonist in her new book is afraid to be loved, and we talk about the vulnerability required on the part of both reader and writer for a true reading connection to be possible.
About INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE:
A fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible personâfrom the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.
Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When sheâs not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, sheâs serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, sheâs trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her.
As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day thereâs only one person she canât outrunâherself.
Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.
EMILY AUSTIN is the author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts about Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
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This week Iâm talking with Waubgeshig Rice about his new novel MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES, which came out in Canada last fall and was just published in the United States, and how he was inspired by Cormac McCarthyâs 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN to craft a narrative in which the land guides the story.
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Waub talks about why he thinks BLOOD MERIDIAN is a post-apocalyptic novel, what he thinks of McCarthyâs representation of Indigenous characters, what heâs most proud of having accomplished in his latest book, and how Emily St. John Mandelâs STATION ELEVEN helped inspire him too. Miigwech to Waub for this excellent conversation!
About MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES:
In the years since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy, Evan Whitesky has led his community in remote northern Canada off the rez and into the bush, where theyâve been rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions, isolated from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in a world after everything, Evanâs people are stronger than ever. But resources around their new settlement are drying up, and elders warn that they cannot stay indefinitely.
Evan and his teenaged daughter, Nangohns, are chosen to lead a scouting party on a months-long trip down to their traditional home on the shores of Lake Huronâto seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of lifeâand what dangerâstill exists in the lands to the south.
Waubgeshig Riceâs exhilarating return to the world first explored in Moon of the Crusted Snow is a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth.
WAUBGESHIG RICE grew up in Wasauksing First Nation on the shores of Georgian Bay, in the southeast of Robinson-Huron Treaty territory. Heâs a writer, listener, speaker, language learner, and a martial artist, holding a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He is the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge (2011), and the novels Legacy (2014) and Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018). He appreciates loud music and the four seasons. He lives in NâSwakamokâalso known as Sudbury, Ontarioâwith his wife and three sons.
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This time Iâm talking with Ashley Tate, bestselling debut author of TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES, about how reading Iain Reidâs smash hit novel IâM THINKING OF ENDINGS gave her permission to write the blendy psychological thriller-literary mash-up of her dreams (or worst nightmares?).
In our conversation, Ashley talks about stumbling upon Reidâs debut novel without any idea of what she was getting into, how the novel gave her permission to write the kind of book she wants to read, about leaping over the bounds and limits of genre, how for her it always starts with character, the ways in which an ordinary setting can be absolutely creepy with the right tension, and why it makes sense that a story about grief is so destabilizing.
About TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES:
Welcome to West Wilmer.
Where everyone knows everyone.
And where everyone has a secret.
THE QUESTION No one in the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer can forget Phoebe Dean, their sweet, beloved golden girl. Itâs been ten years since the car crash that tragically took her life, yet one question lingers: Why did it take her brother, Grant, twenty-seven minutes to call for help after the accident?
THE SECRET As the anniversary of Phoebeâs death approaches, Grant is consumed by memories of that night and everything he lost: his future, his reputation, his little sister. And the secret heâs been keeping all these years is threatening to undo him. But he and Phoebe werenât the only ones in the car that night. Becca was there, too, and sheâll do anything to protect Grant.
THE TRUTH Everyone in West Wilmer remembers Phoebe, but only June Delroy remembers the other person lost that same night. Her brother, Wyatt, disappeared ten years ago, without a trace.
Until someone appears at her door.
Someone who may know where Wyatt went all those years ago.
Someone who knows what really happened that night.
Someone who is ready to tell the truth.
Taking place over three days and culminating in a shocking twist that will leave you breathless, Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping story about what happens when grief becomes unbearable, dark secrets are unearthed, and the horrifying truth is revealed.
ASHLEY TATE worked for over a decade as a writer and an editor for various publications as well as Canadaâs first online magazine. Twenty-Seven Minutes is her debut. She lives with her husband, their two children, and their dog in Toronto.
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Another week, another BOOKSPO pairing. Iâm so excited to bring you my conversation with Shawna Lemay all about how a chance encounter with Annie Dillardâs PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK at an Edmonton bookshop in the 1990s created a path thatâs led all the way to here and Lemayâs latest book, the essay collection APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL.
Shawna talks about the notion of pre-internet books, why she likes seeing the world with her camera, how APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL is an indoor book (not a single muskrat!), what Annie Dillard has to tell us about still-life, and what we can learn from the still-lives on our kitchen counters. This conversation is a celebration of the extraordinary ordinary, and Iâm so happy to share it with you!
About APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL:
Apples on a Windowsill is a series of meditations on still life, photography, beauty, and marriage. Full of personal reflections, charming anecdotes, and the history behind the art of still lifes, this lyrical memoir takes us from Edmonton to Rome to museums all over North America as Lemay discusses the craft of writing, the ups and downs of being married to a painter, and her focus on living a life in art and in beauty. A must read for fans of The Flower Can Always Be Changing, Everything Affects Everyone, and Rumi and the Red Handbag.
Shawna Lemay is the author of The Flower Can Always Be Changing (shortlisted for the 2019 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction) and the novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag, which made Harperâs Bazaarâs #THELIST. She has also written multiple books of poetry, a book of essays, and the experimental novel Hive. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She lives in Edmonton.
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Welcome BACK to BOOKSPO. This time Iâm talking to novelist Charlene Carr (âthe Canadian Jodi Picoult,â in case you didnât know) about her new novel WE RIP THE WORLD APART, and how her bookspo was David Chariandyâs 2018 memoir IâVE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU: A LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER.
Charlene talks about how David Chariandyâs memoir gave her permission to write the story she needed to tell, why she chafes at the ideas that sheâs obligated (as a person of colour) to âfixâ racism or that all her work must concern race, how âracial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice,â and the ways in which ideas about reproductive justice are interwoven with all of this.
About WE RIP THE WORLD APART:
A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennettâs The Vanishing Half and David Chariandyâs Brother
When 24-year-old Kareela discovers sheâs pregnant with a child she isnât sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.
Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize theyâd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicionâa constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.
Years later, in the aftermath of Antonyâs murder by the police, Evelynâs mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violetâs efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.
Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her familyâs past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.
Weaving the womenâs stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.
CHARLENE CARR lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and daughter. She has published nine novels and recently received grants from Arts Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts to write her next one.
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The first episode of BOOKSPO begins with a splash as Iâm joined by the authors of brand new mystery novel BURY THE LEAD, co-written by bestsellers Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti, whose âbookspoâ was the smash-hit novel THURSDAY MURDER CLUB, by Richard Osman.
In our conversation, Kate and Liz tell their origin stories as mystery readers, discuss what inspired them about Osmanâs book, outline just what makes for a great mystery series, why feminism is a necessary part of their world-building, and share their strategy about how to keep that series from getting too preposterous (ie keeping dead vicars to a minimum!).
About BURY THE LEAD:
A big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets ⊠and murder.
Cat Conway has recently returned to Port Ellis to work as a reporter at the Quill & Packet. Sheâs fled the tattered remains of her high-profile career and bad divorce for the holiday town of her childhood, famous for its butter tarts, theatre, and a century-old feud.
One of Catâs first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser, the lead in the theatreâs season opener of Inherit the Wind. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on opening night, the curtain rises on the sleepy townâs secrets. The suspects include the actor whose career Eliot ruined, the ex-wife he betrayed, the women he abused, and even the baker he wronged. With the attention of the world on Port Ellis, this story could be Catâs chance to restore her reputation. But the police think sheâs a suspect, and the murderer wants to kill the storyâand her too. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance?
KATE HILTON is the bestselling author of three novels: The Hole in the Middle, Just like Family, and Better Luck Next Time. When not writing, Kate works with psychotherapy and life coaching clients in the area of transformational change. No stranger to reinvention herself, Kate has had prior careers in law, university administration, publishing, and major gift fundraising. She lives in Toronto in a blended familyâincluding a husband, two sons, a stepdaughter, and a rescue dog.
ELIZABETH RENZETTI is a bestselling Canadian author and journalist. She has worked for the Globe and Mail as a reporter, editor, and columnist. In 2020 she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality. She is the author of the essay collection Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls and the novel Based on a True Story. Her book What She Said: Conversations about Equality will be published in 2024. She lives in Toronto with her family.
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