It seems like everyone is talking about Jamie Zeppa’s debut novel, Every Time We Say Goodbye, a 2011 New Face of Fiction selection!
“[A]n astute and effortlessly readable portrait of a family in crisis. . . . Zeppa has fortified this raw material with a rich family history, shifting dynamics and a gentle voice that allows the novel to waft, rather than plod, as it pieces together its characters’ disparate narratives. . . . [Dawn’s] disappointment is rendered with such empathy that even the most stone-hearted of readers will be moved. . . . [Zeppa has] craft[ed] a smart, accessible novel that has put Sault Ste. Marie on the map of the family epic.” Emily Landau, National Post
“Zeppa’s fine sense of observation and atmosphere of Sault Ste. Marie remains throughout. You know its middle-class homes, cramped apartments, cheap hotel rooms; you breathe its daily life. . . . Much to admire.” Winnipeg Free Press
“[Zeppa] shimmer[s] with promise. . . . Jamie Zeppa, an accomplished travel writer . . . explores family dynamics and those emotional bugaboos—abandonment and longing—in her compelling first novel, Every Time We Say Goodbye.” ELLE Canada
“Rife with raw and stifled emotion, broken dreams and broken hearts, [Every Time We Say Goodbye] is less a quiet triumph than a thunderous tour de force that keeps you laughing, hoping and turning every page until hours have slipped by.” Heather Camlot, Sweetspot.ca
“[It] doesn’t do it justice, just to say what it is about. Better to say what it does to the reader, for the reader. . . . It grips your heart and doesn’t let you put it down until you have come to the final words. Then you are left, like so many characters in the book, somewhat bereft. I am so very glad that a friend recommended this book to me . . . this book is so very well written––so tender and even funny at times, that I firmly believe it will soon be considered a Canadian classic, with pride of place beside Ann-Marie MacDonald and Carol Shields, two of my favourite Canadian authors. The fact that Every Time We Say Goodbye is her first novel . . . is even more amazing. . . . Read this book!” Natashya, KitchenPuppies
“Jamie Zeppa takes [the traditional] definition [of family] and flips it on its head in her wonderful new novel. . . . Fabulous coming-of-age story. . . . Every character has a purpose and a place in the novel and the ending will once again take you in a completely different direction than you thought you were going. Jamie Zeppa is one of Knopf Random Canada’s New Face of Fiction authors and after reading her fabulous . . . debut, it isn’t hard to figure out why!” Reeder Reads
“A captivating family saga—full of deeply felt observations and breathtaking tenderness—Jamie Zeppa’s debut is sure to steal your heart.” Ami McKay, author of The Birth House
“In Every Time We Say Goodbye, Jamie Zeppa does for Sault Ste. Marie what Alice Munro does for Southwestern Ontario. The sense of place is palpable. The suffering characters are reminiscent of the quiet tragedy of Richard B. Wright’s Clara Callan. There is a certain small town tragic, silent, suffering that belongs to Canada and Zeppa has boiled down its essence. It is also a great read. It captures the teenage girl’s longing for excitement and the tragedy that follows such inclinations.” Catherine Gildiner, author of Too Close to the Falls and After the Falls
“A tender, exquisitely written story that aches and laughs and hopes, and never quite leaves you. Jamie Zeppa’s Every Time We Say Goodbye is driven by characters so real you nearly become them. A deeply penetrating novel.” Tish Cohen, author of The Truth About Delilah Blue and Inside Out Girl
“Every once in a while a delicious novel comes along, one that pulls you in and twirls you through its world until you look up and three hours have gone by. Or six. While there are many stories about families, what distinguishes this book is the compassionate wisdom that underpins it, the grace that echoes through it. To read this masterful (and humorous!) novel is to feel what it is to forgive and live bravely: with a tender, laughing, ever-opening heart.” Alison Wearing, author of Honeymoon in Purdah
BookLounge.ca is giving away 10 signed copies of this fantastic debut novel. Click here to get the details. You can also read the first chapter of Every Time We Say Goodbye here, or meet Jamie Zeppa at one of her tour stops.
Beautifully written, hauntingly told, Touch is a New Face of Fiction novel that in its storytelling and recounting of a multi-generational family story brings to mind Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude - and in its evocation of the mythic wilderness, Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road.
Touch will be available wherever books and eBooks are sold on April 12, 2011, but we’ve got a sneak peek for you:
Writing is a lonely sport. During the day, when my daughters are in school and my wife is at work, I sometimes feel like I’ve simply been forgotten, that at any moment they will come bursting back through the door to take me with them. The house has its own rhythm when my family is home, but when it’s just me, it’s as if something is absent, the hum of the refrigerator not enough to compensate for what is missing. The thing is, there’s something about that odd sort of loneliness that I like. I’ve spent plenty of time writing in coffee shops with headphones on to block out the noise, but mostly, nowadays, writing full time, I work from home. I think it helps that I play music when I’m writing, that the keyboard for my computer clicks furiously as I type, that I hear the words in my head, but I know for sure that it helps that I’ve got a dog curled up at my feet.
Thursday afternoon I had the pleasure of joining Joy Fielding at Zoomer Magazine headquarters for the Writers Bloc webcast. Upon arrival, the lovely Zoomer team greeted us with tasty treats and whisked Joy away for hair and makeup. (I’ll admit that I’m always a bit jealous watching people get their makeup done professionally.) The webcast was a live show, and with a bit of time before it was to start, we fawned over the latest photographs of Joy’s gorgeous grandson. Shortly before they went live to air, we were brought down to the concert lobby, where the webcast team, made up of various members including a floor director, a sound engineer and several camera operators, scurried around us. Microphones on. Ear pieces in. Final primping. And ACTION!
Joy and editor/host Athena McKenzie sat in two casual chairs on a lush cream faux fur carpet and began the show. Joy’s book trailer introduced her new novel Now You See Her and her daughter Shannon Micol’s music was incorporated. Athena was a wonderful host, guiding Joy through various questions that were pre-submitted by fans and some that were sent during the live taping. As a publicist you hear lots of questions, many that are versions of the same. And as Joy publishes a book a year I’ve had the chance to get well acquainted with her answers. But some of the more original questions asked at this taping included a fan wanting to know if Joy keeps a notebook on her bedside table for great ideas she gets in the night? And what the secret to her 37 year long marriage was. To find out the answers, you’ll have to watch the podcast!
[Editor's note: Every April, the Toronto Public Library hosts a month-long festival called Keep Toronto Reading. As part of these festivities, the library selects one book they believe all Torontonians should read. This year's selection is Judy Fong Bates' Midnight at the Dragon Cafe.]
In my parents’ house there were no English books. The library in my small town was the size of an elementary school classroom. The shelves went to the ceiling and were so close together that even a small child like me had to walk sideways between them. I visited as much as three times a week after supper, and if it had been open, I would have been there the other evenings as well. That dusty crowded room transported me to worlds unknown. The women volunteers introduced me to Lewis Carroll, Daphne du Maurier, L. M. Montgomery, the Brothers Grimm, and more. For an immigrant kid like me, the public library was one of the primary building blocks in my love of words and stories. I am deeply indebted to the library of my youth. So, when Tina Srebotnjak told me that Toronto Public Library had chosen Midnight at the Dragon Cafe for its Keep Toronto Reading 2011 One Book, I was speechless!
The events that have been planned for Midnight at the Dragon Cafe are extensive and interesting. And on a personal level, I am flattered to see so many other writers and artists involved. Who would ever have thought that an immigrant girl like me would one day not only write a book, but have its cover on the side of a Toronto streetcar!
I really enjoyed exploring the lives included in Marthe Jocelyn’s "Scribbling Women". This book was interesting not just because of the rare writing that it explores, but because of the adventures portrayed. Real women - wives and mothers, sisters and slaves - who struck out in new and unconventional ways, and managed to write about it. The fact that many of them were literate at all is impressive for their eras.
One of my favourite "Scribbling Women" was Mary Hayden Russell in Chapter 3. She’s a bit like a real-life Elizabeth Swann, sailing the high seas and being entertained at various seaports in the Atlantic Ocean. Through Mary’s accounts, we get a glimpse of what life was like for other adventurous women – the wives and daughters of colonial governors. Perhaps for the same love of Pirates, I was also intrigued by Mary Kingley, who made a similar voyage to the Canary Islands and spent her life exploring and recording.
To me, "Scribbling Women" is the kind of book you want to put into the hands of any young woman who is destined for great things. It proves over and over again that life can take you anywhere. In a world where we record pretty much everything about ourselves and share with the public, the significance of a book like "Scribbling Women" could easily be lost. I hope it finds more readers like me who will treasure the life stories with in.
As a rule, a book cover should offer an evocative image (perhaps two), a come-hither wink to the prospective buyer. “Look at me,” the cover should say. “Aren’t I the most attractive book in the store? Don’t you want to take me home?”
Now there are as many ways to define attractive as there are people with opinions, but one can assume a few standards. The image should be colourful, it should be in focus, and if possible there should be some sort of “eye contact.” (If that contact involves locking orbs with a cuddly animal or a chiseled Hollywood star, so much the better. But that’s children’s books and celebrity bios, an entirely different discussion.) Designing a hockey book tends to be challenge when faced with these criteria.
I am a huge fan of working dogs and especially admire Border collies. Many years ago I attended a sheep herding event on Saltspring Island. Afterwards, I fell into conversation with a shepherdess about her dog, Tessa who, the shepherdess explained was a delinquent, unmanageable dog she rescued from the local pound. Tessa had lived in several homes but was brought back to the pound because she was too unruly, too wild, and had way too much energy for family life. The shepherdess said, “I put Tessa in a pasture with a three or four sheep to see what she would do. Tessa had never seen or smelled a sheep before, and as far as I knew, never even been in the country.
The bookclub I’m a part of has existed in some shape or form for ten years. In it’s current nameless existance, we’re made up of a few original members, a few new members, and even a satellite member who Skypes in from Michigan when she can (and who sends lengthy notes when she can’t). We’re tea drinkers. And we like our water with frozen lemon wedges. We’re also major snackers and have become experts on a variety of cheeses, fruits, candy and baked goods thanks to our monthly meet-ups. Usually we do the book club thing in someone’s barely tidy living room (often mine), and occassionally we class it up a notch meeting at a chacuterie board-style restaurant and sip wine while we eat. Like most book clubs we don’t talk business first. As members trickle in at 7:30pm we catch up on what the kids are up to (there’s two moms amongst the ten), what our partners have been doing to make us crazy, and how work is going (collectively we are three teachers, two book publicists, one physiotherapist, one event manager, one software developer, one fashion consultant, and one project manager). About half an hour in we usually get reigned in by one of the teachers who pulls out her book with several sticky notes. Often our starting point is “whatdja think of the book in general?” or “would you recommend this book to others?” and often “what the heck was going on with…?”
Everyone at McClelland & Stewart and Random House of Canada was thrilled to find out that author Judy Fong Bates’ memoir, Midnight at the Dragon Café was to be the Toronto Public Library’s pick for 2011’s “One Book” campaign, a city-wide book club, run by the TPL, that invites all Torontonians to read the same book and then come together to discuss it at events across the city in April.
Midnight at the Dragon Café tells the story of a young Chinese girl growing up in small town Ontario, where her family owns the lone Chinese restaurant.
I was Judy’s publicist last year, helping to get the word out about her most recent book, The Year of Finding Memory, a memoir about Judy’s quest to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents’ past lives (available March 29 in paperback). Judy is a wonderful self-promoter - smart, warm, outgoing and a hard worker - all qualities a publicist loves in an author, so it’s always great to see her books get the recognition they deserve.
The TPL (the world’s busiest urban public library system) launched this year’s program with a splash - teams of celebrities, got up early on Monday, February 28 to hand out books along the route of a specially wrapped “One Book” Queen streetcar, traveling westbound on the late morning commute.
The launch included CBC Radio’s Laura Di Battista and Matt Galloway, The Toronto Star’s Richard Ouzounian, Geoff Pevere and Catherine Porter and Dwight Drummond and Anne-Marie Mediwake, hosts of CBC News Toronto.
A hugely creative and fun way to get the word out!
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