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Fiction Literary

The Days

Forecasts, Warnings, Advice

by (author) M.A.C. Farrant

Publisher
Talonbooks
Initial publish date
Sep 2016
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772010077
    Publish Date
    Sep 2016
    List Price
    $14.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781772010084
    Publish Date
    Sep 2016
    List Price
    $14.95

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Description

It’s hard to worry about the future when you’re laughing at the hilarious absurdity of daily life.

 

The days we live go by like slugs eating their way through leaves; everything changes, yet nothing changes, and the years soon accumulate. Who doesn’t read their daily horoscope, searching for guidance about what’s to come, how to live? What is life, but ordinary and special days, time passing, humour, sex, death, and love (making it all bearable)? All these are repeated gestures that run through The Days, a kind of absurdist guidebook made up of ninety unconventional, very short stories collected in three tight sections. This is fiction that thinks, fiction that cuts to the chase, told with Farrant’s trademark humour and acerbic wit. Her miniatures gracefully articulate the contemporary zeitgeist: anxiety about the future coupled with absurd mundanity. Somehow, always, Farrant captures the moments that buoy us up, crystallizing the experiences keeping us from being overwhelmed while calling our attention to overwhelming truths.

 

 

Let yourself be excited and delighted. Farrant’s artfully spare stories – averaging a couple of paragraphs each – offer enough food for thought (and mood) to keep you going for months. Dip in occasionally to be reminded of the strangeness of us, or read from beginning to end and immerse yourself in a slightly skewed version of reality – one in which people are frank and the world is unforgiving as it shimmers like light on water, sometimes blinding, always dazzling.

About the author

Born in Sydney, Australia and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, M.A.C. Farrant is the acclaimed author of nine previous collections of satirical and humourous short fiction, and two works of non-fiction. Her writing has been widely anthologized in North America and has been dramatized for television; Farrant is also a frequent contributor to leading magazines such as Adbusters and Geist. Her 2004 memoir, My Turquoise Years, is being adapted into a stage play in conjunction with the Arts Club Theatre of Vancouver; production is slated for the 2011/12 season.

Farrant has taught fiction workshops in Canada and Australia. She was a visiting writer-in-residence at Macquarie University in Sydney. A full-time writer currently residing in North Saanich, B.C., she has also taught part-time at the creative writing department in the University of Victoria and reviews books for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe & Mail.

Farrant’s work is infused with acerbic wit and iconoclastic innovation. As the Globe & Mail has noted, “Farrant is better at startling us with unnerving, often misanthropic visions of everyday life than perhaps any other Canadian writer”.

BC Bookworld has called her “Canada’s most acerbic and intelligent humourist.”

M.A.C. Farrant's profile page

Awards

  • Short-listed, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

Editorial Reviews

“The short prose pieces in this new collection are sharp and shapely embodiments of the old adage ‘Less is more.’ Here M.A.C. Farrant curates her own brilliant and uneasy theory of modern life where every day is ‘a combination of breath and panic and glory’.”
—Diane Schoemperlen

“Nimbly walking the tightrope between prose and poetry … knife-sharp narratives … an odd, Alice in Wonderland-esque calendar … You can feel you’re growing older in the few hours it takes to read these tales. … a book that doesn’t give the brain a moment’s rest.”
Pacific Rim Review of Books

“Once again M.A.C. Farrant has delivered a packet of fictional snippets with heft. … Grounded in the everyday, Farrant’s observations reveal the unusual in the usual, and she does it with her charming and quirky sense of humour. … Farrant has her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary life and can see both its beauty and its flaws, and they’re often the same thing. … The Days: Forecasts, Warnings, Advice is great fun, but it also makes you look at the world in a fresh way.”
Vancouver Sun

“A beguiling, quirky delight … Ever-whimsical and confidently left-field. … It is fully possible to discern serious intent behind the book’s gleeful riffling through cultural ephemera; the odd humor, off-center observations, and clever wordplay anchor the book … A tilted or askew vision operates throughout and takes readers to unexpected but rewarding places.”
Publishers Weekly

"Canada’s most ascerbic and intelligent humorist."
BC Bookworld

"One of the best humorists in the land."
Ottawa Citizen

"Farrant’s work is infused with iconoclastic innovation."
Globe & Mail

“Hilarious, absurd, these pieces of micro-fiction are like a mirror held up to the reader’s life. Farrant’s spare prose packs full stories into a few short paragraphs that you will be thinking about for weeks afterwards. She has her finger on the pulse of our times.”
—City of Victoria Butler Book Prize jury, 2017

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