Bad Land

by Corinna Chong

Overview

The slow-burning, deeply felt story of a social outcast reckoning with the wounds of her past

Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez—a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak—upending Regina's quiet life.

It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through plains and mountains that forces Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.

Rife with gothic tension and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551529592
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Corinna Chong's books are the novel Bad Land (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024), the acclaimed story collection The Whole Animal (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), and the novel Belinda's Rings (NeWest Press, 2013). Her short fiction has appeared in magazines across Canada. She lives in Kelowna, BC, where she teaches in the English department at Okanagan College.

Editorial Reviews

07/29/2024

Chong (The Whole Animal) offers a muddled story of a loner and her troubled family. Thirty-something Regina lives alone in her childhood home in the badlands of Alberta, Canada. Her younger brother Ricky left home seven years earlier, and in the interim, Regina has spoken to no one and become dangerously overweight. When Ricky shows up with his six-year-old daughter, Jez, he refuses to explain their sudden appearance and the absence of Clara, his wife and Jez’s mother. Regina assumes the pair are on the run, and she gives them refuge, hoping to form a meaningful relationship with Jez. When Jez squeezes Regina’s pet rabbit too tightly, knocking the wind out of him, Regina slaps her on the forearm. The episode causes Regina to confront the long history of violence in their family, including her mother’s abuse, and these details reverberate when Chong reveals why Ricky and Jez fled from their home. Unfortunately, the meditation on generational trauma is obscured by underdeveloped characterizations, particularly of Regina, whose extreme isolation and obesity feel a bit exploitive in the absence of deeper insights. It’s a letdown. Agents: Marilyn Biderman and Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Bad Land is a masterpiece about family, how it rips us apart and also tethers us forever, for better or worse. Chong shows how some loves are unequivocal and indelible, as though they are cast in stone. This novel is surprising at every turn—touching, unsparing, saturated with truth about love and abandonment. All those damaging, enduring human entanglements, old as the dinosaurs. Chong's narrator, Regina, has the pull of a planet. I love every sentence here; I love this novel."
—Lisa Moore, author of This Is How We Love

"With compassion and keen perception, Bad Land explores the bodies we inhabit, the blood that connects us, and the bones in the ground under our feet. Corinna Chong is an unforgettable writer, and this is a stunning, deeply unnerving book."
—Julia Phillips, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

"A powerful and disturbing exploration of kinship and obligation—a riveting literary journey I'll never forget."
—Suzette Mayr, Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of The Sleeping Car Porter

"Bad Land is a marvel—original and unforgettable. Chong's voice echoes beyond the last page."
—Linda Spalding, author of The Purchase

From the Publisher