Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, these first short stories from Terry Griggs herald one of the most original voices to appear out of Canada in the last several decades. The stories in Quickening are eccentric, wildly inventive, whimsical and fantastic. Her narrative energy sweeps us along, though the real delight of these stories is the gorgeousness of the writing.
The Discovery of Honey is a suite of short stories narrated by Hero, its hyper-precocious and nosily omniscient central character. Running wild even before she can walk, Hero goes on riotous road trips, dabbles in DIY dark magic, falls in and out of love with a feral bad-boy cousin, and kills a friendship with home truths. Funny business all around. Terry Griggs is the author of the Governor General's Award-nominated book Quickening, as well as The Lusty Man, Rogues' Wedding, and Thought You Were Dead. Her popular children's novels include the Cat's Eye Corner series. She lives in Stratford, Ontario.
Spooked by some ball lightning on his wedding night, repressed young Catholic Griffith Smolders interprets this as a sign and abandons his conjugal responsibilities by escaping through the window, enduring a series of misadventures along the way involving, among others, con men, murderesses, shipwrecks, and autodidact biologist hermits. Giving chase, his betrothed, Avice Drinkwater, finally runs Grif aground in a tiny island community, and prepares to exact her revenge. Set in the rough-and-tumble late nineteenth century backwoods, The Iconoclast’s Journal is wildly kinetic, a madcap picaresque and comic anti-romance by one of the most inventive writers at work today.
Rogues’ Wedding is a masterful and wildy inventive novel from acclaimed author Terry Griggs. Set in 1898, it takes us on a comic romp across Victorian Ontario, through a landscape full of extraordinary characters and natural wonders, as we follow two newlyweds whose fates are more entwined than they’d like to believe. As Griffith Smolders prepares to join his new wife in the bedroom of their bridal suite, he takes an inordinate amount of care in disrobing. What slows him down is not a meticulous nature, but rather fear and self-doubt -- and a suspicion that Avice’s sexual knowledge far exceeds his own. While pacing the room and fretting about what awaits him, Grif is startled by a mysterious, glowing ball of light that floats in through the window. He wonders if it might be the work of some prankster, intent on disrupting the night’s activities, but when the ball begins to chase him around the room and singe his heels, he knows it must be an omen: a sign that in marrying Avice he has made a terrible, terrible mistake. Jumping out the window, he escapes the fiery menace -- and his bride -- and runs off into the night. True to Grif’s fears, the bold Avice has positioned herself on the bed “dressed in absolutely nothing but her frightening knowledge,” and spends the moments leading up to her mate’s arrival smiling at the thought of his nervous preparations. But after an hour has passed, she investigates and discovers that she is utterly alone. At first she is too overwhelmed to move, but Avice has never been one to play the victim or accept defeat. Her shock is soon replaced with fury and she swears to exact her revenge: she will claim what is hers, no matter the cost (to him). Taking care not to alert her family to Grif’s disappearance, she heads out on their honeymoon as planned -- and then begins to hunt Grif down. So begins Rogues’ Wedding, and the fanciful flight -- and fight -- at its heart. Whereas Avice knows very well her destination -- wherever she can find and punish her errant husband -- Grif is propelled forward only by his desire to flee. After he leaves London he heads north, and his vagabond journey becomes a magical odyssey through the landscape and society of Victorian Ontario. What he finds along the way is mostly trouble. Traversing the countryside, Grif resorts to thievery to make his way, but without much success. Then he comes to the aid of a coquettish young lady and mistakenly boards a ship that is about to sink. He is the sole survivor of the wreck, and when he washes up on shore he is taken in by a nurturing lighthouse keeper who attempts to set him back on track by sending him off with an amateur naturalist to roam the shoreline. But of course Grif doesn’t really have a track, and when his encounter with a bizarre family leads to accusations of murder, he holes up in a small hotel on Manitoulin Island to await his certain demise. There, it’s not the law that catches up with him, but Avice. And their reunion, when it happens, is blisteringly intense. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Another Manitoulin Island story from the author of Quickening. Terry Griggs' stories have appeared in numerous Canadian journals; they have also been anthologized in The New Press Anthology, No. 1, The Macmillan Anthology 3, and the Journey Prize Anthology, No. 2
Terry Griggs' first novel is a comic extravaganza of life in an island community. It is also about the lake surrounding that island, about water itself. The events of the novel are weirdly refracted. This is the story of a christening, a portrait of a community, a story of a quest - the search for the Lusty Man, an iron-age Celtic fertility figure transported to these shores in the nineteenth century, which presides over the novel's loving, quarrelling, and begetting. The story revolves around members of the Stink family who live in unwholesome closeness at the clan home in Stinkville, Belchie Township, and in satellite mobile homes. Chet Stink plays Jingle Bells by hitting diverse portions of his skull with a wrench; Tennessee Ernie Stink practices fire-swallowing with a BBQ-starter and a marshmallow on a toasting-fork; the entire pack is reputed to live on road-kill. Into these lives and through them drift angels, ghosts, and an androgynous school teacher whose subversive methodology renders intriguing consequences. The Lusty Man is a novel experience indeed. It is rather like watching the frozen activity of a Hieronymus Bosch painting or seeing a Breugel explode into manic life.
These dynamic, easy to follow teacher guides are written by a professional teacher librarian and include: age level and grade level; description of book and author; words to know before you read the book; chapter questions and activities; activities beyond the book; curriculum extensions.
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