Giggling thru a book reading

Eden reminded me of local women I know. She seemed to fit into Rupert as if she were born here. ‘ What a relief to not have to explain where Kitimat is, nor what Eulachon is’. And what a relief for us to see an almost local person become famous and still retain her roots and humor.

Not only has Eden published a book of short stories (Traplines) but also an acclaimed novel Monkey Beach.

CONTENTS

Giggling thru a book reading 1

Eden recognition, prizes 1

Voices of Home 1

Eden Reviewed by SALON 2 2

Eden recognition, prizes

Trapline was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best work of fiction in the Commonwealth, and was selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice and Notable Book of the Year.

Monkey Beach was short listed for Giller etc,.

Eden Reviewed by SALON

Several of the reviews I read were just re-writes of the publishers online blurb. For whatever reason, her books are no longer on that book publishers site. Instead I found it on Houghton Mifflin (+Amazon.com). The promised paperback could not be found either.

By far the best review online was SALON.COM
There Kitimat and Eden are exotic.

(During the reading, Eden mentioned how her publishers did not want the extended family she was drawing: ‘too many characters for the NY public to remember’) Still, Salon reads the story with sensitivity.

The best line was used in Montreal paper quoting a SUN reviewer--"The dark humour is still pure, but the grit and blood is now mixed with meditations on still waters, ancestral voices, ghostly footsteps and beating hearts." That is a comparison of Traplines and Monkey Beach. Several of my friends alluded to the same reaction after reading Monkey Beach.