What's Left Us

by Aislinn Hunter

Overview

What's Left Us is a stunning fiction debut by one of the most promising new writers in Canada. The novella and stories in these pages startle and engage the reader with their humour, warmth and grace. The novella traces one week in the life of a young, unmarried Irish woman about to give birth. The heroine is a hip, independent woman who muses on memory, love, loss and inheritance in a clever, wry and moving way. The other stories are set in Dublin, the U.K., Vancouver and Ontario and continue Hunter's funny and insightful exploration of quirky characters and situations. What's Left Us offers us exacting and exciting words by a prodigiously talented young writer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385680905
Publisher:	Doubleday Canada
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

AISLINN HUNTER's acclaimed collection of stories, What's Left Us, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and the ReLit Prize. Her poetry, Into the Early Hours, was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize and won the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection of poetry The Possible Past was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. Her novel Stay (2002; reissued in 2013 by Anchor Canada) was a Globe and Mail "Top 100" book, a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and has recently been made into a feature film starring Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling. The World Before Us is her first book of fiction in twelve years. After travelling to London and Edinburgh over the past few years to study for a PhD, Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

Canadian writer Hunter struggles to make the transition from poetry to fiction in her debut collection, an uneven affair that consists of a brisk but touching novella and six up-and-down short stories. The title novella deals with the plight of a Londoner named Emma who conceives a child with her married lover. Peevish and annoyed, Emma is at first too prickly to win the reader's affection as she vents her anger at her lover for providing only halfhearted emotional and financial support. But Hunter writes insightfully about Emma's dilemmas and emotions once her protagonist begins to assert her independence, and the graceful finale features an intriguing shift in which Emma begins to delve into her family history in Dublin and then plans a journey there to have the baby. "Hagiography" is a quirky tale describing the unique romantic situation of a woman who believes she has a divine calling to work in a porn palace; the denouement is surprising and touching. The whimsical "At the Bus Stop in Love with the Idea" relates an encounter on a Dublin bus between an ordinary man and a troubled woman obsessed with his argyle socks. "We Live in This World" is a poignant story of family love and loss. Other stories are more problematic: several are based on ill-conceived, clumsily developed conceits, and Hunter's habit of building her tales around disaffected women occurs at the expense of underdeveloped male characters. The potential for excellence shines through in the second half of Hunter's novella, and one hopes she will build on her ability to express epiphanic moments in clear, economical prose. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly