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Fiction Literary

Burr

by (author) Brooke Lockyer

Publisher
Nightwood Editions
Initial publish date
Apr 2023
Category
Literary, Ghost, Gothic
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780889714427
    Publish Date
    Apr 2023
    List Price
    $22.95

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Description

A ’90s-era Southern Ontario Gothic about holding on to the dead, voiced with plaintive urgency and macabre sensuality.

In the small town of Burr, Ontario, thirteen-year-old Jane yearns to reunite with her recently deceased father and fantasizes about tunnelling through the earth to his coffin. This leads her to bond with local eccentric Ernest, who is still reeling from the long-ago drowning of his little sister. Jane’s mother, Meredith, escapes into wildness, enacting the past on the abandoned bed that she finds in the middle of the forest, until her daughter’s disappearance spurs her into action.

The voice of the town conveys the suspicions and subliminal fears of a rural community—a chorus of whispers that reaches a fever pitch when Jane and Ernest disappear from Burr together. Throughout, the novel is haunted by Henry, a former wrestler who once stood on his bed in the middle of the night, holding up the weight of the ceiling in his sleeping hands.

Mixing realism and the fantastic, Brooke Lockyer’s debut novel investigates the nature of grief and longing that reach beyond the grave.

About the author

Brooke Lockyer holds a BA from Barnard College and an MA in English in the field of creative writing from the University of Toronto. She was the winner of the 2009 Hart House Literary Contest and a co-recipient of both the Peter S. Prescott and the Lenore Marshall Barnard prizes for prose. Her work has been published in Toronto Life, carte blanche, the Hart House Review, White Wall Review and Geist. She’s lived in rural Japan, New York City, Bristol and the Mojave Desert. Lockyer currently resides with her family in Toronto, ON.

Brooke Lockyer's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“Gentle, wise and beautifully weird: this is a novel which takes seriously the spooky and tender dimensions of grief and our imagined afterlives.”

Gail Jones, author of <em>Five Bells</em>

“Original. Exquisitely written. Lockyer takes her story of a young girl dealing with the death of her father in directions that foil your expectations, turning a painful world of loss and mourning into a celebration of life. Utterly charming.”

Rosemary Sullivan, author of <i>The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation</i>

“This is a magical novel, death-obsessed yet thrumming with life, wondrously attuned to tender and unexpected connection. I loved it! Brooke Lockyer writes like a dream. Every sentence made me see the world newly. Read Burr and be transformed.”

Catherine Bush, author of <em>Blaze Island</em> and <em>The Rules of Engagement</em>

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