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Fiction Short Stories (single Author)

The Pagan Nuptials of Julia and Other Stories

by (author) Keith Henderson

illustrated by Raffaele Ariante

Publisher
DC Books
Initial publish date
Nov 2005
Category
Short Stories (single author), General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9789196889859
    Publish Date
    Nov 2005
    List Price
    $17.95

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Description

"A remarkably erudite collection that displays an impressive versatility." -- The Montreal Gazette

About the authors

Keith Henderson has published five other novels with DC Books, The Restoration (1992), The Beekeeper (1990), The Roof Walkers (2013), Acqua Sacra (2016), and Sasquatch and the Green Sash (2018), political essays from when he was Quebec correspondent for the Financial Post (Staying Canadian,1997), as well as a prize-winning book of short stories, The Pagan Nuptials of Julia, 2006). He led the Equality Party during the separatist referendum of 1995, taught Canadian Literature at Vanier College for many years, has sat on numerous boards in Anglo-Quebec including ELAN and the AELAQ, and is currently President of The Special Committee for Canadian Unity. He is completing a critical autobiography with special focus on the works of Edith Wharton.

Keith Henderson's profile page

Raffaele Ariante's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, IPPY Best fiction Eastern Canada

Editorial Reviews

"The Pagan Nuptials of Julia takes us from Montreal to rural Italy, where Julia was born.... Its a story that says something profound about the human condition. It feeds the soul.... " -- The Globe and Mail "This book is an interesting well written collection of stories told from a variety of viewpoints male, female, young, old, married, single, divorced." -- The Montreal Review of Books "The story though that sticks with me the most is The Garden of Earthly Delights, perhaps because this is also my favorite painting by Hieronymus Bosch. How Henderson manages to fashion an allegory about the protagonists tainted raspberry patch leading to his subsequent illness and the interpretation of the Bosch painting is a marvel to behold. He writes about a scene in the painting of a man surrounded by the permutation of human evil and another figure glancing at the world with wistful despair at the pleasure of the tavern he has just forsworn: a drunken lout pissing against a wall, a tattered roof, a Dutch whore beckoning from a shutter-buckled window.Perhaps it was the sense of plague that gave so skeletal a quality to the life of those times just as the sense of holocaust has to our own. Juxtaposed with this is his own disease from eating the tainted berries that he states is of a far less spiritual nature. Again, an encapsulated summary of what has happened to our notion of suffering humanity. It is at this point that I want to conclude with why such writing matters. Hendersons vision in these stories reflects the loss of value in our post-modern world, a world of quotidian, material concerns and empty longings. Gone are the grand themes of art from our lives, he suggests, and we are much the poorer for this. Besides Henderson being a master of style, it is because of such insights and affirmation that this is good writing one that makes no apologies and is unremitting in its endorsement of the human spirit." -- Zsolt Alapi, Montreal Rampage, December 2018 "As leader of Quebecs Equality Party from 1993 to 2003, Keith Henderson was hardly shy about expressing his views on the rights of English-speaking Quebecers. In The Pagan Nuptials of Julia Henderson shrewdly weaves his political insights into nine fictional tales of Anglos who remained in Quebec to deal with an increasingly difficult situation." -- Concordia University Magazine, December 2005

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