Description

Once
[978-1-897231] $19.95


ISBN 978-1-897231-49-4 | Rebecca Rosenblum | Once | Stories | $19.95

"Who could imagine lives teeming with such whimsy and hope? Only Rebecca Rosenblum, I venture... A single one of these stories offers more truth and humanity than the entire contents of most bookshelves. A remarkable debut." -- Caroline Adderson

A Quill & Quire Top 15 Book of 2008
Globe & Mail Honourable Mention, 2008
Toronto Star Best book, 2008
Maclean's Magazine Rooke of the Year, 2008

Rebecca Rosenblum's Once is a fiercely original and assured debut, a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings -- students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers -- who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies. Darkly urban and contemporary, the writing nevertheless sparks with playful wonder and delight, peeling back the veneer of the everyday to let loose a little of the magic underneath. Human relationships are at the core of this collection, both the larger ones -- lovers and families and enemies -- and those smaller, stranger interactions that hover at the margins of the day. The shapes these stories take are as unexpected as they are seamless; and though unflinching, they are generous, gentle and wise.

THE METCALF-ROOKE AWARD CITATION:


Rebecca Rosenblum's first story collection was an exciting experience for us. She has succeeded brilliantly in creating new and involving shapes for her stories. She sees the world through a prism absolutely hers. Her dialogue is flawlessly performed. And the characters and lives she presents us with are bleakly fascinating. Her hustlers and students and waitresses, her adolescents, her ineffectual fathers -- all inhabit precisely observed worlds.

How could we have resisted for a moment a story with this opening sentence?

"Eva's place is busiest in the evenings -- lots of fried cheese and ass-grabbing near midnight."

-- John Metcalf & Leon Rooke