The Good Life
with Lisa Moore and Patrick DeWitt
Hosted by Stephen Brockwell
In Person Fiction
Moore takes her characters to some undeniably dark places in these stories, though the book is never entirely devoid of humour or hope. And there is abiding joy in the prose, which is lithe and tensile in equal measure. There is astonishment here, and grit, and beauty that is close to breathtaking.
Stephen Brockwell hosts a taste of two new books and a conversation with two of this country’s most celebrated stylists—Canada Reads champion Lisa Moore and Patrick DeWitt, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Festival favourite Lisa Moore returns with Something for Everyone, her third story collection, a soaring chorus of voices, dreams, loves, and lives. Taking us from the Fjord of Eternity to the streets of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the swamps of Orlando, Florida, these stories show us the timeless, the tragic, and the miraculous hidden in the underbelly of our everyday lives. A missing rock god may have jumped a cruise ship—in the Arctic. A grieving young woman may live next to a serial rapist. A man’s last day on earth replays in the minds of others in a furiously sensual, heartrending fugue.
French Exit is a one-of-a-kind “tragedy of manners,” a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. Frances Price—tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature—is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm, mired in a permanent state of arrested development, is no help. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.
Books available for purchase at every event: Proceeds support our free children’s literacy programs.
