• Age: 16
• Grade: 11

Finalist, ReLit Award

Finalist, McNally Robinson Book of the Year (Manitoba Book Awards)

Finalist, Bisexual Book Award (USA)

Whitetail Shooting Gallery, a new novel from award-winning author and Giller Prize nominee, Annette Lapointe, is set in the outer urban, often desolate, landscape of the Saskatchewan prairie.

Cousins Jennifer and Jason live close together as small kids, exploring their rural home. They live in adjacent, sometimes overlapping, households. But one act of family violence begets another, and the cousins drift apart. By adolescence, the two are estranged. Jennifer grows closer to her best friend, Donna, an evangelical minister’s daughter who rebels against her family by immersing herself in a world of vectors, fractals, perfect math, and porn.

Jason’s world is hockey. Donna likes his street-hockey bruises. Jason’s also interested in Gordon, a semi-recluse ex-teacher who lives on the periphery of town and constructs art installations from leather, tamarack, animal skulls, and other found items.

Horses, bears, kissing cousins, and other human animals conspire in a series of conflicts that result in accidental gunfire and scarring--both physical and emotional--that takes many years to heal.

Praise for Whitetail Shooting Gallery:

BC Books for BC Schools Pick

“Imagine Alissa York’s Fauna but in rural Saskatchewan and with all the sentimentality stripped away. Imagine lots of sex, kissing cousins, a gunshot to the face, and a set of teeth that get kicked in over and over again. Imagine a family farmhouse, country roads, the kind of place you might want to move to raise your kids if you don’t look too closely. The hockey player, the pastor’s daughter, how he’s giving blow jobs to his teammates, and she’s having sex with her best friend. … Whitetail Shooting Gallery baffled me thoughout, disturbed and troubled me, but it also intrigued me, continually surprised me, never stopped me wondering what would happen next. It’s an anti-pastoral, a complicated portrayal of rural life. … Annette Lapointe’s literary reputation was established with Stolen, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2006. And here in her second book, she’s turning Can-Lit on its head, challenging not only her readers’ sensibilities, but also ideas about what a novel should be. And the latter seems to be a requirement for the kind of book that I like best.” (Pickle Me This)

“Wintry, notably offbeat, written with an elegant precision, and at times slyly funny … Lapointe’s beautiful treatment of poète maudit subject matter never fails to impress.” (The Vancouver Sun )

“In Whitetail Shooting Gallery, Lapointe gives us an animalistic view of the teen world. This is not small-town rural life as idyllic or pastoral. Lapointe’s world reflects the turmoil, raging emotions and hormones brewing inside adolescents. … the plot is almost secondary to Lapointe’s vivid, powerful voice and her beautifully savage view of rural prairie life.” (Winnipeg Free Press )

Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2012 Pick, 49th Shelf

John Thomas Osborne, aka Tom Osborne, was born on Baffin Island in June of 1949. He has illustrated various books, including Mary Beth Knechtel’s under-acknowledged The Goldfish That Exploded and Social Credit for Beginners: An Armchair Guide (Pulp Press, 1986). He is also author of several books of poetry, including Under the Shadow of Thy Wings (1986), 9 Love Poems, and Please Wait for Attendant to Open Gate. His first novel Foozlers was published by Anvil Press in 2004 and was followed in 2006 by Dead Man In the Orchestra Pit (Anvil). Osborne grew up in Kamloops, B.C. and Vancouver, co-founded Pulp Press in the early 1970s, and currently resides in Maple Ridge, B.C.

Annette Lapointe's profile page

“In Whitetail Shooting Gallery, Lapointe gives us an animalistic view of the teen world. This is not small-town rural life as idyllic or pastoral. Lapointe’s world reflects the turmoil, raging emotions and hormones brewing inside adolescents. … the plot is almost secondary to Lapointe’s vivid, powerful voice and her beautifully savage view of rural prairie life.” (Winnipeg Free Press )

Wintry, notably offbeat, written with an elegant precision, and at times slyly funny, the novel also recalls Margaret Atwood's famous summary of the key Canadian motif: protagonists that survive (usually), but virtually never thrive.

Whitetail Shooting Gallery

Th is novel is set in the dark and coarse teen culture of rural Saskatchewan. Overweight teen Jennifer and cousin Jason have a tentative incestuous relationship. But they grow apart as Jason explores his homosexuality while Jennifer explores lesbianism with her best friend. Th en Jennifer gets shot in the face in, what is thought to be, a hunting accident and lives are changed. Th e plot can be confusing as it moves between the perspectives of major characters and jumps timelines but the author’s voice is vivid and powerful in her savage view of prairie life.

Lapointe’s previous book, Stolen, was nominated for the Giller Award. Th is book was nominated for the Manitoba Book Awards, McNally Robinson Book of the Year,

Caution: Reflecting the tumultuous inner world of the adolescent, this book could be studied under supervision in senior English Classes.