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The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories
Guernica Editions, Spring 2017
190 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771831628
ISBN10: 1771831626
English
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
Read more from the Essential Prose Series
The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories is a collection of sudden fiction that compresses its narrative to deliver a variety of stories that alternate the flavour of a philosophical reflection with the whimsical enchantment of a fable with a twist. These stories also often dwell on the strange--and the horror--found in our mundane lives. Stories that, on occasion, also leap as far as speculative fiction or swirl in a lyrical exploration of prose narratives. Divided into six sections, Midwife explores human and non-human voices through narrative weighing at less than one thousand words, and the vast majority weighing at less than five hundred. Included are a series of black and white lithograph-like original drawings commissioned specifically for this manuscript from the Portuguese visual artist, João Ventura.
You walk out. You walk out as if you had no plans to return. I say no, don't go. I say it in the only way I know: a sigh and a lowering of the eyes.--From "The Wait"
Praise for Scent of a Lie: da costa builds his fictional world with infinite patience and skill. Every line, every word takes the reader directly into the lives and homes of the extraordinary people of these villages.
W.O. Mitchell prize Jury
Praise for Scent of a Lie: Paying homage to a fabulist tradition running from Marquez and Borges and Carlos Fuentes all the way back to Cervantes, da costa evokes his God-beset, earthbound peasants, priests and villagers with palpable, redolent precision.
Jim Bartley, The Globe and Mail
This was an entertaining book filled with compelling short stories. The stories were incredibly rich and detailed even though they were often just a few pages or even just a few paragraphs. The stories were powerful, sometimes subtle in their delivery and language and often times included a delicious twist. They each had a unique message and made me think long after I had finished the book.
Sandra Katsikas, NetGalley Reviewer
Reviews
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Calling Us Into Seeing
CWA - October 2, 2017
Books by paulo da costa
