sewn paper
e-mail the Author
Also by Mary Swan:
Fiction; FIC 029000
September 2003
160 pages
ISBN 0-88984-268-X
$16.95
The Deep.
Emma's Hands
Mary Swan
The O. Henry Awards are regarded as America's most prestigious
awards for short fiction. Mary Swan's story `The Deep', first
published in The Malahat Review, was included in the 2001
O. Henry anthology, which featured such illustrious names as
Alice Munro, Dan Chaon and Louise Erdrich. `The Deep'
subsequently walked away with first prize.
In September, 2002, the Porcupine's Quill published The
Deep in novella format. The book was shortlisted for the
Canada/Carribean Region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, `Best
First Book' category.
Now, the Porcupine's Quill is pleased to bring you Emma's
Hands. These stories range in their settings from an Israeli
kibbutz to Ontario lakeside cottages to the beach at Ostend. Most
of the stories are quietly cadenced and elegiac in tone and the
prose is marked, as Alice Munro says, by `the urgency of feeling
and the calm beauty of the telling.'
`This is a writer who arrives with grace and authority.' `It's not often Alice Munro offers a quote to promote an emerging writer,
but after delving into the pages of Emma's Hands, Mary Swan's
stellar first collection of short stories, it's easy to see why Munro wants people
to stand up and notice. Swan is a first-class writer. Small children, dead relatives,
and memories populate her stories, as Swan pays tribute to all the senses
contained in remembering. ... Swan's gift lies in her ability to produce succinct,
poetic lines that immediately transport the reader to a memory so vibrant it feels like home.
Her deft handling of emotions is as welcome as loving arms, reminding the reader
that comfort is as vital to life as air. Her brilliant opening lines linger in the mind -- hopeful
and portentous -- ushering the reader forward in anticipation.'
- Alice Munro
- Elizabeth Mitchell, Quill & Quire
`... Swan's prose is not imposed conspicuously upon her subject
but arises naturally and appropriately from it. Her protagonists
are invariably women, most often mature women looking back on incidents
in their lives whose significance they now understand for the first time.
Swan's prose is clear, even limpid, reminiscent of the seemingly simple
but highly sophisticated art of Ethel Wilson.'
-- W J Keith, Canadian Book Review Annual
`Toronto's far west corner plays host to high-end condos, low-end motels,
a swimming palace, an abandoned dance hall. As well, it is the starting
point of a weekly walk, a jaunt of mine, to the downtown core. Of
course, there is the lake the reason such far-thinking developers built
such attractions in the first place. The lake, this lake, is never the
same lake twice. Silver with sunlight, dark and foreboding, the surface
calm then rough. A new collection, Emma's Hands, is reminiscent of
this land, this water. ... In Swan's two decades of writing, she
has produced little more than a dozen short stories. I imagine the
first, second, third renderings; the yellowed papers between. I say this
because it is there in the retelling, the deftly nuanced prose. These
character-driven pieces typically relate on two levels at once:
documented day-to-day minutiae contrasted with, and often accompanied
by, a deeper psychological truth surfaced in dreams, memories,
epiphanies.'
-- Maggie Mortimer, the Globe & Mail
`The narrative is electrified by [an] audacious double voice,
along with an equally audacious structural complexity. Swift movements
through time and space and shifts in perspective among a small army of
supporting characters might easily have led to confusion. Yet the care
and control of Swan's writing, the sustained patterns of her imagery and
the sheer beauty of her prose clarify everything that is essential to
the story while preserving its central mystery.'
- Andrea Barrett, The New York Times
`There is something sexy about the alienating elegance of Swan's prose.
Terrible events at the battlefront are referred to alongside ordinary events
in hotels and bars. But it is the objects, the materials of daily life,
that get the most attention.'
- Natalee Caple, eye
`Although Swan shows a rare talent for filling in the deep shadows
of memory and the past, these stories are neither sad nor funereal,
but exciting. They're like listening, for the very first time, to the
story of a friend's life, when everything seens fresh.'
-- Nancy Wigston, the Toronto Star
`Mary Swan's first book, a novella entitled The Deep (2002), revealed
the same qualities that are evident here. I have no hesitation in hailing her
as the most gifted new Canadian prose writer to have appeared on the scene for many years.
But the key, I repeat, is in the style. These stories must be listened to;
every word must be savoured. An exceptional talent is on display here.'
-- W J Keith, Canadian Book Review Annual
Photo by Alex Porter