Hellgoing
Lynn Coady
Lynn Coady gives us nine unforgettable new stories, each one of them grabbing our attention from the first line and resonating long after the last. A young nun charged with talking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blasphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. (From House of Anansi Press)
Hellgoing won the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Coady was also shortlisted for the award in 2011 with her novel The Antagonist.
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From the book
Jane salutes you from an age where to be an aficionado is to find yourself too foolishly situated in the world. Where to care a great deal about something, no matter how implicitly interesting it may be, is to come across as a kind of freak. It's interest — inordinate interest — in something seemingly arbitrary, having little do with you or the context you inhabit. Beanie Babies, say, or Glenn Gould. Jane once a person who insisted he "was crazy about Glenn Gould," who owned all these rare and exotic recordings. Called himself a glennered, happily, smugly. Did other Gould fanatics call themselves glennerds? Jane wanted to know. The glennered shrugged, didn't care. It wasn't about other glennerds, Jane saw, it was only about this particular glennered, him and his fascination. This person was not a musician. Didn't listen to classical music, as a rule.
From Hellgoing by Lynn Coady ©2013. Published by House of Anansi Press.
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