Böcker av Mark Anthony Jarman

Fiction. Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection. Finalist, ReLit Award. Debut novel from the author of 19 Knives and New Orleans Is Sinking. SALVAGE KING, YA! is a gritty, down-to-earth story of a hockey player's last few years in the minors. Drinkwater, an almost-got-to-the-NHL tough-mouthed romantic is skidding through the tail end of his 30s on a high-octane journey of self-actualization. Chip-toothed and soaring he struggles to come to terms with the conflicting aspirations of his youth and the reality of inheriting the family junkyard. Roving. Luminous. Rowdy. Funny. Fantastic: funny, cluttered, driven, as if Denis Johnson had written a hockey novel--The Stranger If it's the best hockey book ever written, does that make it The Great Canadian Novel?--The Danforth Review a brilliant work... a postmodern Canadian classic--National Post A wonderfully fierce and funny book... imagine Hunter S. Thompson on hockey skates--Vancouver Sun

Fiction. From the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet comes a brilliant suite of stories built around music and travel. Whether it's a band coming apart at the ruins of Pompeii, or tours through Napoli's volcanic dust and volcanic drugs and jackal-headed bedlam and mountains of stinking trash; or a nostalgic stroll past the homeless in Victoria's inner harbour while gentle Tunisian techno rides the breeze, where the addicted populate park benches, as weighted as Shakespearean characters... lit rock and tiny chalice hidden under his shirt, get it all, draw every wisp of the wreath and heavy is the head that wears the crown, that lights the lighter. Or it's Steppenwolf or The Youngbloods drifting from a car radio as an ambulance siren and lights fly our street... a flashing mime show of grief's rocket. Or, perhaps they're in Iceland, or Denmark, somewhere seriously lunar and attractive spending wheelbarrows of cash the record execs didn't give them. Or it's the Viper Room, Sunset Boulevard, a bar in Butte, Montana, or Johnny Cash in Tijuana. The five stories that comprise CZECH TECHNO are replete with the sizzle and jump we have come to expect in a Mark Jarman story--those shadowbox anthems of lost icy street corners and vanished republics are on grand display, his herky-jerky emblematic style in full roar. And the quest for love, the matters of the heart, is ever-present, weaving through these stories like a knife blade through sand.

"The best collected short fiction of Mark Anthony Jarman published over the last four decades."--

"From acclaimed author Mark Anthony Jarman comes Touch Anywhere to Begin, his first travel book since the critically acclaimed Ireland's Eye in 2002. In 18 head-spinning essays, Jarman can drift through Venice amid the revelry of carnival and the arrival of the pandemic or visit a private club along Shanghai's Huangpu River to be serenaded by a band of retired People's Liberation Army singers. In "Panthers and Gods Prowl a Palace of Sin," an invitation to the Kala Ghoda Festival in Mumbai forges a connection with a jetlagged pair of Arctic throat singers and a doctor fascinated by Canada. In "Jesus on the Mainline," an extended hospitalization beside the intubated victim of a drunk-driving accident reveals a difficult family drama. And this, of course, is only the beginning. Masterfully written, Touch Anywhere to Begin penetrates the impressionistic moments and intimacies of travel to reveal character and place like none other, creating an appetite for that long-ago time when travel was possible and the unknown alluringly attractive."--

Like a genuine Down-East Christmas, An Orange from Portugal is tangy and delicious. Novelty spices tradition, shadows make joy more precious, and laughter is everywhere. Here are stories to savour. Hugh MacLennan's waif hopes Santa will bring him a real orange from Portugal, Alden Nowlan and Harry Bruce give very different versions of the magical transformations in the barn on Christmas Eve, and Rhoda Graser recalls Jewish children hanging up their stockings. Wilfred Grenfell, Bernice Morgan, and Wayne Johnston host a century of parties. Offerings by Alistair MacLeod and David Adams Richards, Joan Clark, and Lisa Moore, Milton Acorn and Lynn Davies make An Orange from Portugal a rare Christmas feast.