Contemporary Authors

• Anatomy of Keys Brick Books (London, Ontario, Canada), 2006
• Into That Darkness Thomas Allen (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 2011
• Omens in the Year of the Ox ( poetry collection) Brick Books (London, Ontario, Canada), 2012
• By Gaslight ( novel) Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2016

1. Into that darkness LCCN 2010467567 Type of material Book Personal name Price, Steven, 1976- Main title Into that darkness / Steven Price. Published/Created Markham, Ont. : Thomas Allen Publishers, 2011. Description 273 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 9780887627378 (pbk. : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2014 117495 CALL NUMBER PR9199.4.P768 I68 2011 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM1) 2. By gaslight : a novel LCCN 2016032498 Type of material Book Personal name Price, Steven, 1976- author. Main title By gaslight : a novel / Steven Price. Edition First U.S. edition. Published/Produced New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. Projected pub date 1111 Description pages ; cm ISBN 9780374160531 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER PR9199.4.P768 B9 2016 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 3. Anatomy of keys LCCN 2006389675 Type of material Book Personal name Price, Steven, 1976- Main title Anatomy of keys / Steven Price. Published/Created London, Ont. : Brick Books, c2006. Description 141 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 1894078519 9781894078511 Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1008/2006389675-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1008/2006389675-d.html Shelf Location FLM2014 107237 CALL NUMBER PR9199.4.P768 A85 2006 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM1) 4. Omens in the year of the ox : poems LCCN 2012518572 Type of material Book Personal name Price, Steven, 1976- Main title Omens in the year of the ox : poems / Steven Price. Published/Created London, Ont. : Brick Books, c2012. Description 103 p. : port. ; 23 cm. ISBN 9781926829760 (pbk.) Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1306/2012518572-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1306/2012518572-d.html Shelf Location FLM2014 120437 CALL NUMBER PR9199.4.P768 O54 2012 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM1)

• Good Reads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15197330.Steven_Price

  Steven Price
  Born Colwood, British Columbia, Canada
  GenrePoetry, Fiction
  edit data
  Steven Price is a Canadian poet and novelist.

  He graduated from the University of Victoria with a BFA in 2000, and from the University of Virginia with an MFA, in poetry.

  Price's first collection of poems, Anatomy of Keys (2006), won Canada's 2007 Gerald Lampert Award for Best First Collection, was short-listed for the BC Poetry Prize, and was named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. His first novel, Into That Darkness (2011), was short-listed for the 2012 BC Fiction Prize. His second collection of poems, Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), won the 2013 ReLit Award.

  Price teaches poetry and fiction at the University of Victoria, where he lives with his partner, novelist Esi Edugyan.

  Combine EditionsSTEVEN PRICE'S BOOKS
  Average rating: 3.6 · 1,047 ratings · 259 reviews · 4 distinct works · Similar authors
  By Gaslight By Gaslight
  3.58 avg rating — 932 ratings — published 2016 — 12 editions
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  Into That Darkness Into That Darkness
  3.39 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 2011 — 3 editions
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  Omens in the Year of the Ox Omens in the Year of the Ox
  4.12 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions
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  Anatomy of Keys Anatomy of Keys
  4.42 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 2006
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• Macmillon Publishers - http://us.macmillan.com/author/stevenprice

  Steven Price's first collection of poems, Anatomy of Keys (2006), won Canada's 2007 Gerald Lampert Award for Best First Collection, was short-listed for the BC Poetry Prize, and was named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. His first novel, Into That Darkness (2011), was short-listed for the 2012 BC Fiction Prize. His second collection of poems, Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), won the 2013 ReLit Award. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with his family.

• Times Colonist - http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/victoria-writer-steven-price-scores-international-book-deal-1.1570634

  Victoria writer Steven Price scores international book deal
  ADRIAN CHAMBERLAIN / TIMES COLONIST

  NOVEMBER 13, 2014 01:24 PM

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  Steven Price was inspired by story told by his great-uncle. Photograph By COURTESY STEVEN PRICE

  Victoria writer Steven Price has scored an international book deal reportedly in the six-figure range.

  American publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux has purchased Price’s novel By Gaslight. The trade magazine Publishers Weekly reports FSG acquired it “for a figure rumoured to be in the substantial six-figure range.”

  Price told the Times Colonist the rights have also been sold to Canada’s McClelland & Stewart and Britain’s Oneworld Publications, with translation rights going to Bompiani in Italy and Diogenes in Germany.

  Other international rights sales are expected to be announced soon.

  “I’m surprised. This is very unexpected. We’re obviously very pleased with it all,” Price said Thursday.

  The 38-year-old novelist and poet declined to divulge financial details.

  “The sum of money seems like it’s a notable thing. But I think what’s really exciting for me is the vote of confidence an American publisher would have in a Canadian poet. That they’d be willing to invest in a novel by a relative unknown.”

  By Gaslight will be released globally either in 2015 or 2016. Set in London in 1885, the novel is about detective William Pinkerton and a thief called Adam Foole. Over two decades, it takes readers to the diamond mines of South Africa, the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War and the opium dens of Victorian London. Price’s first novel, Into That Darkness, was published in Canada in 2011. He is also the author of two poetry books: Anatomy of Keys (2006), which won the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), winner of the ReLit Award.

  Price is married to novelist Esi Edugyan, winner of the 2011 Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. They have a three-year-old child, with a second child due in a month. His family runs Price’s Alarms, the oldest privately owned security company in Canada.

  Price said he was inspired to write By Gaslight after a conversation with a reclusive great-uncle. Late in life, this relative told a story about the novelist’s great-grandfather, an English gunsmith and locksmith who founded the Price alarm company more than a century ago.

  “[My great-uncle] said something about how my great-grandfather had gotten in trouble with the law in London and fled England. He got to Canada and he kept going west, trying to make sure he wasn’t chased or caught.”

  While Price said he isn’t sure whether the tale is true or not, he became interested in the notion of a literary character who is essentially a good person despite having a checkered past.

  This led Price to researching the real-life William Pinkerton, “an incredibly dark figure” whose father, Allan Pinkerton, founded the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

  Price said he had no prospect of a book deal when he set out to write By Gaslight. He recalled going for a walk with his wife, who encouraged him.

  “She said: ‘You know, if you don’t know whether it will be published, whatever you work on next, it really should be something you want to write.’

  “So I just tried to sit down every day and write some pages that I would have liked to have read,” he said.

  achamberlain@timescolonist.com

  - See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/victoria-writer-steven-price-scores-international-book-deal-1.1570634#sthash.tsTlQGa8.dpuf

• Penguin Randomhouse - http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/308088/steven-price

  Steven Price

  PHOTO BY: CENTRIC PHOTOGRAPHY
  STEVEN PRICE is the author of two award-winning poetry books, Anatomy of Keys (2006), winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), winner of the ReLit Award. His first novel, Into That Darkness, was published by Thomas Allen to acclaim in 2011. He lives in Victoria, B.C.

• Kingston Writersfest - https://www.kingstonwritersfest.ca/festival-author/steven-price-2/

  Steven Price
  Steven Price’s latest novel, By Gaslight, started with a tale – a yarn he was told by a reclusive great uncle about why his great-grandfather came to Canada. Price took germ of inspiration and ran with it. Opening in London in 1885, By Gaslight is the story of detective William Pinkerton and a thief called Adam Foole. Sprawling across two decades, it takes readers from opium dens of Victorian London to the diamond mines of South Africa, and the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War.

  Price is the author of two award-winning poetry books, Anatomy of Keys, a 2007 winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox, winner of the 2013 ReLit Award. His acclaimed first novel, Into That Darkness, published in 2011, is the harrowing tale of one man’s struggles after Vancouver is devastated by a major earthquake. Into That Darkness was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay prize and was a Globe and Mail notable book of the year.

  A graduate of the University of Victoria, and the University of Virginia, Price teaches poetry and fiction at the University of Victoria.

  Appearing in: 36. A Victorian Investigation: Historical Fiction, 39. Saturday Night SpeakEasy.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/308088/steven-price
  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/253483/gaslight

• Vancouver Sun - http://vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/q-and-a-author-revisits-victorian-london-in-by-gaslight

  Q and A: Author revisits Victorian London in By Gaslight

  The Vancouver SunTHE VANCOUVER SUN
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  Published on: August 13, 2016 | Last Updated: August 13, 2016 9:00 AM PDT
  2016 Handout: Author Steven Price (photo by Centric Photography) and his book cover By Gaslight. For TRacy Sherlock books pages. [PNG Merlin Archive]
  Author Steven Price (photo by Centric Photography). CENTRIC PHOTOGRAPHY / PNG
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  By Gaslight

  Steven Price

  McClelland and Stewart

  Steven Price is the author of two award-winning poetry books, Anatomy of Keys (2006), winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), winner of the ReLit Award. His first novel, Into That Darkness, was published by Thomas Allen in 2011. He lives in Victoria, B.C. Steven’s new novel By Gaslight will be published in six countries on August 23.

  Q. By Gaslight moves from Victorian London to the American Civil War to the diamond mines of South Africa. Can you tell us about the book?

  A. Sometimes the writer is the worst one to ask. I’ve come to think of By Gaslight as a panoramic view of the Victorian age. It follows two men, William Pinkerton and Adam Foole. Pinkerton, son of the famous founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, is unofficially in London, six months after his father’s death. He is hunting the one criminal his father never apprehended, an elusive thief named Edward Shade. Foole, a man underlit by colonialism, a man of dubious business interests, is returning to London to seek out a woman he has not seen in ten years. The two men come together in an uneasy friendship as they hunt for their respective answers.

  But the novel casts itself back also, across the decades, as it delves into the mystery of Edward Shade and the ways he has already touched the lives of Pinkerton and Foole.

  I think of it as a novel about a detective, rather than a detective novel, though I have no objection to the label. Ultimately By Gaslight is about parents and children, and our inheritance of grief, and how we come to terms with the unfinished business of a life.

  Q. How did you come to write about London in 1885?

  A. My great-grandfather trained as a gunsmith in London, but fled the capital in 1889. He sailed west, for Canada, and then journeyed overland to the west coast in what must have been a long and arduous trip; and then sailed further, to Vancouver Island. We never knew what had brought him to Victoria; but some years ago my grandfather’s brother told a story: it seems my great-grandfather had got into trouble with the police, serious trouble, and crossed an ocean and a continent to get away. In Victoria he used his gunsmithing skills to work as a locksmith, opened a lock and safe shop, and founded a security business that is still in the family today. I became interested in the idea of a person with inclinations towards the wrong side of the law, working for the right side. Years later I read a biography of William Pinkerton in which he was described in similar ways: a brutal man, a violent man, a man with all of the talents of a master criminal and for whom the ends justified the means, but who worked on behalf of the law. By Gaslight started to write itself in that moment.

  Q. This was the last novel edited by the legendary editor, Ellen Seligman, before her passing earlier this year. Could you speak about that experience?

  A. Ellen was a dynamo, a fierce and passionate believer in the power of fiction, and I miss her. She was warm, dry, funny, thoughtful, respectful and ferocious both. We worked on the novel from January 2015 until the middle of March 2016, one week before her passing. She liked to work over the phone, in conversation, and we would go through every word of every sentence, plucking it out, examining it, holding it to the light, trying to see if the meanings and the rhythms and the tensions were quite what the novel wanted. A regular phone conversation would last five to six hours, and some weeks we would speak five days straight. It was an extraordinarily intimate process. Sometimes she would wait in silence on the end of the line while I worked and reworked a sentence in my head. She had a remarkable gift for the psychological complexities in a character, and would refuse anything from me that felt false. I don’t know how she worked with others, but for By Gaslight she began at the novel’s beginning and worked forward through it, rather than starting with its ending and editing the whole. In other words, the editing process resembled the writing process, it fumbled towards the light. She questioned everything. Praise from her was hard-won but generously given and the more meaningful for it. She held herself and fiction to a standard that is surely inimitable and there will be no replacing her.

  We spoke every day for nearly a year but I never did meet her, never had the chance to tell her in person how grateful I was.

  Q. William Pinkerton really lived. How much of this novel is based in fact?

  A. The research would have been arduous had it not been so fascinating, and such a fine way to procrastinate in the writing itself. I laboured very hard to keep the historical details accurate. This included (sometimes surprising) details of 1880’s London, of course — the popularity of curry, the proliferation of garish advertising, the colours and tones of the fog. But also, as you note, some of the characters too: William Pinkerton, the Scotland Yard chief inspector John Shore, William’s wife and daughters, his brother Robert Pinkerton, are all real people, and are written (hopefully) with accuracy. The hunting of the outlaw John Reno happened exactly as I have written it. The anecdotes in William’s memories, including the collapse and death of his father, and the fistfight with the Farrington outlaw on the paddle steamer, are all true. Even William Pinkerton’s epigraph at the opening of the novel is real and taken from his letters. Adam Foole, on the other hand, is entirely made up.

• Hamilton Review of Books - http://hamiltonreviewofbooks.com/in-conversation-with-steven-price/

  A Living Portrait of a World: In Conversation with Steven Price

  On the evening of Tuesday October 25, 2016, the IFOA's Lit On Tour organizers brought writer and poet Steven Price to A Different Drummer Books in Burlington, Ontario. In front of a large audience of admiring readers, Steven read from his critically acclaimed new novel, By Gaslight, and generously shared his thoughts about the book, his family history, and his important friendship with late editor Ellen Seligman. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.
  Steven Price. By Gaslight . McClelland & Stewart. $36.00, 752 pp., ISBN: 9780771069239
  Steven Price. By Gaslight . McClelland & Stewart. $36.00, 752 pp., ISBN: 9780771069239

  Dana Hansen: I want to start by asking you about why you chose this particular location and time period for By Gaslight. Your first novel Into That Darkness was set in contemporary Victoria, B.C. during the aftermath of a horrific earthquake. Your new novel takes place in 1885 in Victorian London, and has a similarly dark kind of atmosphere. What drew you to write about this time and place?

  Steven Price: Actually, the novel started with the character of Wiliam Pinkerton, and grew from there. Pinkerton was a real person, and so I found myself locked into the era of his life. He led me to his time and place, I guess. In truth I knew very little about the Victorian world when I started writing.

  DH: The reviews of By Gaslight have all been really positive. Many readers have clearly enjoyed the book. I thought one particular reviewer’s comment from The National Post was really interesting. He said, By Gaslight is “not a mystery as we understand the genre, but it is a novel of mysteries closely held and destructive.” Do you feel that that is a fair description of the book?

  SP: I think it's a lovely description, and I hope there's some truth to it. I imagine every author is surprised by some of the responses to their books. Which is as it should be. You have a certain idea of something that you’re moving towards when you’re writing, but it's a gradual movement, and a slow one. For the reader, to read from page eighty to page ninety might take fifteen or twenty minutes. For the writer, it might have taken thirty days to cross that distance. So what you’re experiencing as the writer is very different from what the reader experiences, because the experience of time is so profoundly different.

  DH: I read that the initial spark for the story came from your own personal history, from a story about your great-grandfather Albert Price.

  SP: Who has a cameo in the book.

  DH: He has a cameo, yes, as the gunsmith’s apprentice. Can you tell us a little bit about Albert’s story and how that got you thinking about writing this book?

  SP: Some books have a wonderful origin story, but mine didn’t emerge from any particular event. I found myself wondering at a certain point: I just wrote a 731-page novel about Victorian England. Why did I write it? What was I thinking? The novel began with its opening paragraph - an unusual way for me to enter a book - and that paragraph is really just a character sketch of the detective William Pinkerton. I'd read a biography of Pinkerton some years earlier, in which he was described as a man who got along better with criminals than he did with law enforcement officials. He had very little respect for other private detectives - his father excepted of course - and he had very little respect for police officers, because there was so much corruption in the 19th century. But he got along really well with criminals. He found there was this kind of moral code, honour among thieves, with the criminals that he really respected. He would go down, in his off hours, to the underworld bars in Chicago and he would buy drinks for the crooks, and the crooks would buy him drinks, and they would drink together and talk, and then he’d go home and go to sleep with his wife, wake up, say hello to his daughters, go off to work for that day and try to catch the men he was just drinking with the night before. And he usually did; he was very good at his job.

  Now of course, there was always a professional reason to hang out with these guys and be friendly with them, because he might get a little bit of information; the criminals were competitive with each other, maybe they would give him a tip, but he also just liked the company. And he would put these men behind bars, and they would go to jail for ten or fifteen years. And when they got out of jail, they would come see him and he would give them money and write them letters of introduction so they could get a job. He would try to help reform them because he had compassion for these people and he liked them, which I thought was really interesting. He had all the qualities and traits of a master criminal. He was big and violent and the ends justified the means for him, so he would do whatever he had to do.

  Regarding my family story, on my father’s side, the Prices came over in 1890 to Victoria, B.C., from London, England. Albert Price, my great-grandfather, was a young man in 1890 who was trained as a gunsmith in London, and he crossed the Atlantic – a considerable journey in 1890 – then booked passage on the new railroad, all the way to the west coast of Canada. And from Vancouver he sailed further west, again, to Vancouver Island, and then when there was only ocean ahead of him, he stopped. Why did he do that? Why did he make that journey? He had no family there, no friends, he knew nothing about the place.
  My grandfather passed away in the late 1990s and about fifteen years ago his younger brother, a recluse named Bud, came down from the property where he had been living, on a mountain, up island. I met with him for an afternoon and he was this raconteur, he started telling these wonderful stories.

  And one of the stories he told was about how Albert Price had emigrated to Victoria, and used his gunsmith skills to set up a lock and safe shop, a locksmithing shop, still in the family today. Apparently, Albert was fleeing the law when he left London. He got in some terrible trouble with the law, and he was running. He was a fugitive.
  There was a link there, I think, between this story of my great-grandfather - a man who had flirted with the wrong side of the law, before establishing a business protecting people's property - and that depiction of William Pinkerton, as a detective who felt such a great kinship to the criminal class. But it was a subconscious connection, not something I sought out. It surprised me.

  DH: Despite the fact that you included a number of characters that really did live (such as the Pinkertons), you state in your author’s note in the book that this is not a historically accurate portrayal of London in the 19th century, and that it is obviously fiction and not a history book. But you clearly did a lot of research for this book; there are just so many exquisitely fine details of the period. I wonder if you could tell us what the research process was like in writing this novel.

  SP: Thank you. I regret many things I’ve written, but rarely have I regretted anything as much as I’ve regretted writing that author’s note.

  DH: And I bring it up, of course.

  SP: You know, I wrote that because – and I have no problem with other books that do this – but I was feeling impatient with having to cite sources, as if By Gaslight were an academic work. I wanted to create a space for dreaming again. I wanted a living portrait of a world. I didn’t mean to suggest that I had done no research at all. I worked very hard to keep things true, especially the parts of the book that have to do with people who really lived; I wanted to keep everything as accurate as I possibly could. But I didn’t want to cite the fifteen pages of sources that I would have had to cite if I did that. So I thought I would make this very obvious point and say, “Hey, everybody, this is fiction!” Well, some reviewers seemed to have taken that to mean I didn’t do any research at all and just made it all up.

  DH: You did research.

  SP: Yes. Absolutely. I read many books, as many books as I could. The Victorian era is so interesting because it’s the first period in history that has been thoroughly documented. There was journalism, there was the dawn of photography, and there was the incredible rise in literacy. So there’s no end of sources that you can consult, and it’s a wonderful thing for a writer, but it’s also a great hazard because there are many other people who have read other books and there are many experts out there on this era. I worked hard because I wanted to make sure that it was very accurate, and sometimes that would lead me to surprising details, details that perhaps weren’t really well known. Then I would find myself thinking, Do I include that detail, even though it might be poking the bear and people will say that’s not true? Well, it is true, it’s just not well known. Or do I go with the more traditional stereotypical portrayal of the era? I always went with what I thought was factually accurate.

  While I didn’t get to travel to any of the places specifically for the book, because I have young kids at home, most of the places that I’ve written about in the novel, I’ve either lived in or travelled through already, such as South Africa. I’ve been to London several times, and I lived in Virginia. So what I was doing was calling upon my own memories to imagine these places. And there's a kind of freedom in that.
  Photo credit: IFOA Lit On Tour
  DH: William Pinkerton and Adam Foole, two of the main characters in By Gaslight, become quickly drawn into each other’s acquaintance. We’re not going to give anything away about what happens, but we discover that there are deeper connections between them. There’s a kind of Jekyll and Hyde dynamic with these two characters, and a lot of play with ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark. I get a sense from your first novel and your poetry that these may be themes you’ve explored before. Is it important for you to investigate this idea of whether someone can be wholly good or wholly bad? Pinkerton, for instance, is on the right side of the law, but may have a darker side. And the opposite for Foole: he’s a thief, but there seems to be a softer, better side to him, too.

  SP: I like the Jekyll and Hyde comparison. There are three main characters of course – Pinkerton, Foole, and Shade. But Pinkerton and Foole are the ones that we follow through the book in alternating chapters. I set out to create Foole as a kind of foil for Pinkerton, so where Pinkerton is a character for whom the ends justify the means, for Adam Foole they don’t. Whereas Pinkerton is a person soaked in violence, Foole is somebody who has no patience for violence, no interest in violence, and doesn’t use that in his work. I set out to create these two very distinct characters who were playing off of each other, and yet as the novel proceeded – and books sometimes write themselves as much as we write them, and often the act of writing is an act of listening, where you’re trying to listen to what the book is saying back to you and what it wants in the connections its making, and you’re trying to listen to that and let the book figure out what it wants to do, which sounds a little crazy, but it is a little crazy – as the book proceeded, that distinct quality between the two characters started to blur as if the characters were contaminating each other, which I thought was kind of an interesting thing.

  But of course that’s what life is like, and that’s what people are like. You can be very clear-cut in who you are until you find yourself pushed into a situation that is somehow morally compromising or complex. There is a wonderful line from the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Miłosz survived the Nazi occupation in Poland and fled from the Russians. Sitting at a café in Paris watching all these people walking past him on the street, he wrote a poem. He looked at these people and thought, innocence - that is what you have before you are subjected to a test. In other words, whether you fail the test or you pass the test, whether you do the right thing or the wrong thing, you no longer are innocent. I feel like that’s sort of what is happening with the characters across the course of this book. They’re constantly being compromised by impossible situations, constantly having to make choices. No matter what they do, they can’t ever go back to who they were before.

  DH: Could you talk a little bit about the significance of the father-son relationships in the novel?

  SP: The first thing I wrote was the opening paragraph of the novel. It ends with “The only man that William Pinkerton ever feared was his father.” I don’t think there would be a book if I hadn’t got to that last sentence. It’s kind of a strange thing to say, but books grow out of characters, I think, in conflict, that is, characters who are faced with something that throws up a reflection of themselves, That last sentence is the moment William Pinkerton is suddenly in conflict. His father has recently died, and he has to deal with his grief. When I say grief I mean his long memory of who his father was, and who his father is. The two things aren’t the same. In William Pinkerton’s case, I think of the entire book as a love story between him and his father, as he tries to become someone no longer dependent on his father. He’s no longer the child; he can become the parent of his own children.

  Foole’s backstory is revealed in the fifth section of the book, right in the middle: where he comes from, which are very modest circumstances, the adventures he had as a very young boy orphaned in the world. For Foole, one of the important parts of his life has been this idea of identity and belonging. There’s the family that you’re born into and the family that you make, and for Foole he never really knew the family that he was born into, so for his whole life it’s been about the family that he’s made. He had a moment in his life where it seemed like it wasn’t a question of choice, as though he’d found a family that wasn’t just of his choosing, and he’s always wanted to go back to that place, but he’s also always felt a betrayal because that was taken from him by force. That’s the source of his anguish, I think, as a character.

  DH: Foole goes on to develop this very odd family of his own, which produces two extremely interesting characters, Molly and Fludd. They become the most unlikely trio you can imagine. Can you tell us a little bit about Molly and Fludd?

  SP: Molly is a young girl. She is a pickpocket, an orphan raised in the streets of London. She was virtually owned as a young girl and Foole buys her and then gives her her freedom. But she’s not a child – well, she is a child, absolutely she's a child, but she’s not a child as we would think of it today, here, in Canada. She has a degree of street smarts that elevates her so that she is a part of Foole’s team, a working member. It’s a complicated relationship because of course he looks at her as a child; it’s almost as if she’s his adopted daughter, but at the same time he relies on her as a professional part of his crew. And then there’s Japheth Fludd, who is a very large man, bearded, tattooed, very rough looking. He’s been in jail and he’s recently come out of jail. These three people form a kind of family.

  DH: You are an acclaimed poet with two collections of poetry. I’m wondering if you’re still writing poetry, and how poetry might inform your novel writing.

  SP: I haven’t given up poetry. I’m not currently writing it. I can’t do both at the same time. I think you think differently when you write poetry. But I’m looking forward to the day I can go back and write some more poems. How do the two inform each other? I came to writing first as a poet and I published first as a poet, and I still describe myself as a poet, but I think the two are fundamentally different, very different. Poetry is closer to non-fiction. The vehicle for fiction, the kind of fiction I write and the way I think of it, is the character. So your characters are moving through time and through space, and that’s what the story is, whereas in poetry it’s a very different experience. You can write a poem about a landscape, you can write a poem about a person, you can write narrative poetry, there’s a lot of different kinds of poetry, but fundamentally what it’s moving towards or seeking is some truth about the world, some observable wisdom or an attempt at wisdom, which is a little bit closer, I think, to nonfiction. In other words, the poet can step back and speak about the poem as a whole, whereas in fiction everything is carried along by the characters.

  DH: Did the transition from poetry to fiction come easily for you?

  SP: Well, I’ve always done both. Even though I published first as a poet and I went to grad school for poetry, the transition wasn’t difficult.

  DH: You’ve written about the experience of working with the iconic McClelland & Stewart editor, Ellen Seligman. You wrote a beautiful tribute to her in the Literary Review of Canada, in which you describe what became a year-long process working on this book with her. You said that you cut 35,000 words from the novel, that you added some 70,000. You removed two significant characters, and you rewrote the ending. Could you talk a little bit about your time working with Ellen, and what the importance is of a good editor to a book like yours?

  SP: Ellen Seligman edited many of the novels we have come to think of as the Canadian canon. She edited and published many of the most accomplished writers in the country and became dear friends with them, writers like Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Jane Urquhart. She kept an eye out for young writers as well, ones she could encourage. She would get in touch with young writers and write them letters encouraging them about books that she’d seen of theirs even if she wasn’t going to publish them. It was her way of saying, “Keep going at this, this thing is important, these words matter.” And that was how she lived her life – words mattered to her.

  We worked on By Gaslight for thirteen months. I didn’t know her before I signed with her. So this was our first book and of course my last book with her. She had a very strange way of working on a novel. Usually editors will mark up a manuscript, send it to the author, the author will receive it, and start trying to wrestle with the edits. She liked to edit in real time, on the phone, and so we would have these long intense conversations. The phone calls would last five to six hours, often five days a week, week after week. It was the most generous, most extraordinarily complimentary act that a writer could experience, that somebody would be so engaged in their work and feel like it mattered so much that they were working that hard at it.

  I think sometimes there might be a misconception about what editors do. Some people think that editors get a book in front of them and then they fix it. That’s not really what they do. It’s certainly not what Ellen did. I suppose there might be editors out there who force themselves onto a manuscript, who try to change a manuscript to suit their tastes, but Ellen wasn’t like that. Ellen would read a manuscript, get a sense of what it wanted to be, what it was trying to be, because a book has its own internal logic. It has its own questions that are raised at the front end of a book, that maybe should be coming down at the back end of a book or have been dropped somewhere along the way. An editor’s job is to look at that, figure out what the book is trying to do, and then try to bring that to the writer’s attention and ask questions.

  Ellen asked a lot of questions. Ellen liked to ask questions on a macroscopic level, big questions, overall questions about the book, about its ideas or its themes or what it was trying to do, and on the microscopic level. She began at the beginning, and she worked through a manuscript in a linear fashion, which is a little unusual. We dealt with what was on page one, and when we got that working we dealt with page two, and when we got that working we dealt with page three. Many times there would be a point at which we’d be faced with a sentence, and I’d be trying to figure out a solution to it because she would never give me the solutions, and she would sit there quietly on the end of the phone while I typed and I worked and reworked and I found the sentence.

  So it was a very intimate process and what happened across these thirteen months was she became an intimate…I want to say friend, but it was more than being a friend. She was this intimate companion in this creative experience, this journey that we were on. Which was really wonderful, but she was always only ever a voice on the end of the line. I never got to meet her in person. I travelled out to Toronto to see her; we had set up a week to meet, have dinner, and this was in November, and she died the following March. Three weeks before she passed away, she phoned me up – we’d kind of put the book almost to bed by then. She phoned me up one day and said, “I just wanted to hear your voice.” That’s not like Ellen. Ellen always had a reason to call. We had this lovely little fast chat. She was calling to say goodbye, I realize now. Three weeks later she passed away. But I always wished I had had a chance to meet her, give her a hug, tell her how much she meant to me, what an important woman she was in my life.

  DH: So what’s next for you? Are you working on something now?

  SP: Well, I get home on Thursday, and I get to see my kids and my wife. I think I’m going to sleep for a little bit, and then I’ll see.

  DH: Thank you so much, Steven.

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Print Marked Items
Price, Steven. By Gaslight
William Grabowski
Library Journal.
141.17 (Oct. 15, 2016): p79. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Price, Steven. By Gaslight. Farrar. Oct. 2016. 720p. ISBN 9780374160531. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780374714116. F
The immersive grandeur and gravity of Price's (Into That Darkness) sophomore novel might answer the literary cognoscenti question: "Where are today's Dickenses, Radcliffes, and Twains?" The prismatic narrative chronicles the life of William Pinkerton--one of the first private detectives--called by Scotland Yard to Victorian London to track con artist Edward Shade. With a mercurial persona and a relentless brilliance that eluded his father, Alan, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Pinkerton is also the equal to Shade's violence and cunning. Concurrent with the detective's arrival, Adam Foole and preteen Molly ship to London after a missive from Foole's lost love, Charlotte Reckitt, but learn the woman was gruesomely murdered--or was she? Powered by an enigmatic connection among the Pinkertons, Shade, Foole (who might know Shade's true identity), Reckitt, and her jailed father, the story moves from the U.S. Civil War to South Africa's diamond mines, from the American West to foggy London's excrement-reeking streets. Price's naturalism is unsentimental, adding verisimilitude to a book already thrumming with emotional and psychological realism. VERDICT The author's blend of quest, grief, betrayal, and the mysteries of identity will appeal to readers of literary crime fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16; library marketing.]--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Grabowski, William. "Price, Steven. By Gaslight." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 79. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466412959&it=r&asid=64ec31468d18047e8534e33bc2388311. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466412959
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Holiday gift guide 2016: whether you're
searching for an absorbing mystery, a lavish
coffee table book, or something for a new reader,
you've come to the right place
Clare Swanson
Publishers Weekly.
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p21. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The holiday season is fast approaching, and with it, the yearly task of tracking down the just-right gift for everyone on your list. Luckily, PW has done the heavy lifting. We've scoured the shelves, consulted the experts (booksellers and our very own reviews editors), and left no page unturned to find the perfect present for every kind of book lover. HAPPY SHOPPING!
THE LIT LOVER
Commonwealth
Ann Patchett. Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-249179-4 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Patchett's latest novel is a funny, sad, and heart-wrenching family portrait: a collage of parents, children, stepchildren, siblings, and stepsiblings, showing how alliances and animosities ebb and flow over time, and how a fatal accident changes the family for good.
By Gaslight
Steven Price. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
ISBN 978-0-374-16053-1
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In 1885 London, a woman's dismembered body incites two men to search through opium dens, seance halls, and foggy streets to find an elusive master criminal.
Combining historical suspense with literary sophistication, Price weaves a sweeping, transporting tale of hunter and hunted.
Hag-Seed
Margaret Atwood. Hogarth. ISBN 978-0-8041-4129-1
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Atwood reimagines Shakespeare's The Tempest by making her Prospero a prominent theater festival director who stages a play with prisoners. Perhaps most rewarding in this canny remix is marveling at the ways in which Atwood changes, updates, and parallels the original play's magic, grief, vengeance, and showmanship.
The Mothers
Brit Bennett. Riverhead. ISBN 978-0-399-18451-2 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Bennett's brilliant, tumultuous novel begins with 17-year-old Nadia Turner's pregnancy (the father is the local pastor's son) and its cover-up. Years later, living in debt, the characters are haunted by what might have happened if they had made different decisions.
Swing Time
Zadie Smith. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1-59420-398-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This rich, absorbing novel from the acclaimed author of White Teeth and NW garnered a starred review. With "nuances of race relations" that are both "subtle and explicit," the book tracks the friendship of two brown girls in London who dream of being dancers, and ranges from the metropolis to West Africa.
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This Must Be the Place Maggie 0'Farrell. Knopf.
ISBN 978-0-385-34942-0
This magical love story is about the unlikely meeting of Daniel, an American, and Claudette, a French-English former actress, and their struggle to hold things together in the face of a secret from Daniel's past. By incorporating a dizzying array of perspectives and detail, O'Farrell has crafted a stunning exploration of how relationships start, end, and last.
To the Bright Edge of the World
Eowyn Ivey. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-24285-1 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This riveting adventure novel follows an 1885 wilderness expedition in which Col.
Allen Forrester must map Alaska's northern interior, leaving his pregnant wife, Sophie, on her own at Fort Vancouver. Perfect for armchair explorers.
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THE BUDDING DETECTIVE
Picks for fans of mysteries and thrillers
In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper
Edited by Lawrence Block. Pegasus Crime.
ISBN 978-1-6817-7245-5
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This high-concept crime fiction anthology has obvious crossover appeal to art lovers. Heavyweight contributors include Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Stephen King, and Joyce Carol Oates.
A Great Reckoning
Louise Penny. Minotaur. ISBN 978-1-250-02213-4 After steady growth in sales since 2006, Canadian author Penny finally hit the number one spot on PW's Hardcover Fiction bestseller list this fall with her 12th mystery featuring Quebec's Chief Insp. Armand Gamache. Those who haven't noticed Penny's rise will want to know what all the fuss is about.
Night School: A Jack Reacher Novel Lee Child. Delacorte.
ISBN
978-0-8041-7880-8
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The 21st Jack Reacher novel is cause for special celebration, as 21 is the number of books in the popular Travis McGee series written by bestseller Child's literary idol, John D.
MacDonald. Plus, Tom Cruise is reprising his role as the vigilante loner this fall in the second Reacher movie, Never Go Back.
Road to Perdition
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Max Allan Collins. Brash. ISBN 978-1-941298-96-1
Collins had to adhere closely to the screenplay when he wrote the novelization of the 2002 movie starring Tom Hanks, which was adapted from his original graphic crime novel set in Prohibition-era Chicago. This much improved, expanded version is a must-have for fans of the movie and the graphic novel.
Surrender, New York
Caleb Carr. Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-45569-1 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fans of bestseller Carr's The Alienist, about a psychologist tracking a serial killer in late 19th-century New York City, won't want to miss this ambitious novel, about a psychologist and a DNA expert investigating crimes from their base in present-day upstate New York.
THE SCI-FI HOUND
Wrap up some science fiction and fantasy this year
Everfair
Nisi Shawl. Tor. ISBN 978-0-7653-3805-1
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Steampunk fans will be delighted by Shawl's clever revitalization of the genre.
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The setting of the Belgian Congo lays bare the colonial underpinnings of the steampunk aesthetic and draws readers deep into a tale of culture clash, intrigue, and utopian hopes in the midst of disaster.
The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin. Orbit.
ISBN 978-0-356-50819-1
Jemisin's complex, haunting novel of seismic magic and climate terror has gotten renewed buzz from its Hugo Award win this August. The paperback edition is an excellent gift for any casual fan of SF.
A Natural History of Hell: Stories
Jeffrey Ford. Small Beer. ISBN 978-1-61873-118-0
This is the perfect reader-who-has-everything gift for fantasy fans with a literary bent or vice versa. Ford brilliantly cross-pollinates the grim suburban settings of literary fiction with fantastical elements, adding dashes of humor and empathy to provide some light in dark days.
The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin. Saga. ISBN 978-1-4814-7596-9
The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K. LeGuin. Saga. ISBN 978-1-4814-5139-0
These handsome hardcover collections of some of the finest work by one of America's finest authors will delight any fan of speculative literature. Le Guin is a living legend, and even readers who know much of her classic work will fall for it all over again.
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THE HOPELESS ROMANTIC
They'll fall in love with these romance books Christmas at Promise Lodge
Charlotte Hubbard. Zebra.
ISBN 978-1-4201-3943-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Hubbard's second Promise Lodge Amish contemporary romance smoothly integrates its seasonal theme with the ongoing story of three sisters founding a new colony where single women and ostracized families can find refuge. Hubbard excels at weaving a feminist perspective into the daily realities of Amish life.
Do You Want to Start a Scandal Tessa Dare. Avon.
ISBN 978-0-06-234904-0
Dare's delicious Regency romance, in which a proper young woman is rumored to have trysted with an arrogant spy, links her two popular .series, but the earlier books definitely aren't required to enjoy this one. Her current fans will love it, and new readers will get the bonus gift of an extensive backlist to explore.
First Star I See Tonight
Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-240561-6
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The newest book in Phillips's Stars series of contemporary standalone novels is a pure delight. Phillips has a knack for nuance and stage-setting that grounds her characters, a clumsy PI and a hapless former quarterback, and gives their hilarious story extra weight as they fumble and scrimmage their way into romance.
Looking for Group
Alexis Hall. Riptide. ISBN 978-1-62649-446-6
When the college-age protagonists of Hall's tender, sweet novel meet in an online game, it's not clear at first that they're both men--but the bro/nerd conflict looms much larger than concerns over sexual identity. The game is explored extensively and the physicality is limited to a few charmingly awkward kisses, making this a great gift for teens.
Sunrise Crossing
Jodi Thomas. Harlequin. ISBN 978-0-373-78930-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In this first-rate contemporary, Victoria, a talented artist, escapes to Crossroads, Tex., which sets into motion a chain of seemingly unrelated events. The book's pitch-perfect pacing, well-crafted characters, and satisfying ending earned it a starred review in PW.
Sweet Tomorrows
Debbie Macomber. Ballantine. ISBN 978-0-553-39183-1
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Diehard fans will already have this tear-jerker concluding volume to Macomber's Rose Harbor series, which has two romance threads in one volume, but it's an excellent fit for anyone looking for books that hit the sweet spot between romance and women's fiction.
THE COMICS SAVANT
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Perfect for graphic novel and comics fans Attack on Titan Anthology
Scott Snyder et al. Kodansha. ISBN 978-1-63236-258-2 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A dazzling lineup of Western comics creators--among them Asaf Hanuka, Faith Erin Hicks, Paul Pope, Afua Richardson, Gail Simone, Scott Snyder, and Ronald Wimberly--create original stories based on Hajime Isayama's global manga smash Attack on Titan series. The 256-page book comes loaded with special material.
The Best American Comics 2016
Edited by Roz Chast and Bill Kartalopoulos. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-544-75035-7
The current golden age of comics is reflected in a particularly rich edition of the yearly anthology, with work by Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, Cece Bell, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, and Julia Wertz; a great sampler for a wide range of material and introduction to some fine talents.
Frank Miller's Sin City: The Hard Goodbye Curator's Collection Frank Miller. Dark Horse. ISBN 978-1-50670-070-0
Printing art at its original size, and in revelatory detail, artists editions are the ultimate item for collectors. And few books look better in this large format than Miller's stark, visceral black and white tales of violence and passion.
March Trilogy Box Set
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John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. Top Shelf. ISBN 978-1-60309-395-8
The much lauded--and now long-listed for the National Book Award--series about the birth of the civil rights movement is finally completed with a long and triumphal third volume, and all three are collected in a slipcased edition.
The Wicked + The Divine
Deluxe Edition: Year One
Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, and Matthew Wilson. Image. ISBN 978-1-63215-728-7
The gods have been reincarnated in human form, but in modern society, gods are celebrities and celebrities are gods, and it's hard to tell the difference. The first 11 issues of this dazzling fantasy about fame, identity, and divinity are collected in a deluxe hardcover.
THE POETRY DEVOTEE
Collections for the lyrical ones in your life Certain Magical Acts
Alice Notley. Penguin.
ISBN 978-0-14-310816-0
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
There's no real "wrong" choice when it comes to picking a collection from Notley.
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Here, it's her against the world, or at least its modern ills. Notley doesn't shy from seeking via language, and these big- picture poems can have a kitchen-sink feel in their inclusiveness.
Collected Poems: 1974-2004
Rita Dove. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-28594-9
One of America's most brilliant and lauded poets finally sees all her work in one place, a boon to new and familiar readers alike. Dove can effortlessly shift from lyric to experiment, and from historical voice to personal recollection. But it's the unexpected feelings she evokes that keep readers rapt.
Float
Anne Carson. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-101-94684-8
Carson continues to experiment with what makes something a poem as well as how best to deliver it. Float is actually a collection of 23 autonomous chapbooks bundled together so that their disparate elements and subjects play off each other in wild ways, however one chooses to read them.
Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2015
Rae Armantrout. Wesleyan Univ. ISBN 978-0-8195-7655-2
If for some reason you haven't kept up with Armantrout's recent production, or don't know her work well, this is an excellent way of getting acquainted. The volume includes 32 new poems as well as selections from her Pulitzer Prize- winning collection, Versed.
Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin Edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. Norton.
ISBN 978-0-393-35273-3
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This anthology collects poems and brief essays from 43 African-American poets, highlighting crucial intersections of art, history, and social justice. The volume includes such figures as Rita Dove, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Harryette Mullen, Natasha Trethewey. With photos by Victoria Smith.
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THE HISTORY BUFF
Take them back in time with good books
Eleanor Roosevelt: The War Years and After, 1939-1962 Blanche Wiesen Cook. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02395-0 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Anyqne who's read the previous two volumes of Cook's monumental trilogy will obviously want the concluding volume, but even those who haven't will appreciate how Cook details Eleanor's move out from F.D.R.'s shadow to become the figure of social justice we recognize her as today.
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Margot Lee Shetterly. Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-236359-6
Shetterly founded the Human Computer Project to share the stories of the female mathematicians behind America's aeronautics and space programs. Here, she celebrates the black women hired in the midst of Jim Crow, addressing the "collision between race, gender, science, and war." Read the book before you see the film!
Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf.
Liveright.
ISBN 978-0-87140-442-8
Gordon-Reed and Onuf succeed in making some sense of the contradictory and paradoxical elements of Jefferson's life, which continue to flummox more modern publics. Much has been written on Jefferson, and will continue to be, but these are the sort of insights for which readers didn't realize they pined.
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 Adam Hochschild.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-547-97318-0
The Spanish Civil War largely remains a blip on most Americans' historical radar, if it appears at all. Perhaps Hochschild's account will change that, given its focus on the small number of Americans who volunteered to fight and the reasons they did so.
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Time Travel: A History James Gleick. Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-307-90879-7
Gleick is a formidable science writer, but his books on such grand ideas as chaos and information may be better recognized as science histories. In his latest, he not only details the scientific concept of time travel, but leads readers through a mind-blowing history of human conceptions of time.
THE PEOPLE PERSON
Big biographies and memoirs
Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend
Deirdre Bair. Doubleday/Talese.
ISBN 978-0-385-53715-5
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
National Book Award-winning biographer Bair gets at the truth behind this eternally fascinating man, who was equal parts charismatic mobster, doting father, calculating monster, and a major player in American gangster mythology.
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen. Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 978-1-5011-4151-5
The Boss recounts his life--from his childhood in New Jersey to the rise of the E Street Band--in this sweeping 500page memoir.
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
AmySchumer. Gallery. ISBN 978-1-5011-3988-8
In our starred review, we write that the Emmy Award-winning comedian's essay collection is "plucky, forthright,
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hilariously raunchy--and honest." The instant bestseller covers Schumer's childhood, family, and her path to stand-up stardom.
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Michael Lewis. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-25459-4
The latest from bestselling author Lewis (Liar's Poker, Moneyball, Flash Boys) explores the studies of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which upended conventional notions of the human decision- making process.
THE SPORTS NUT
Play ball!
The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams Michael Tackett. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN 978-0-5443-8764-5
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In a remarkable tribute to an exceptional coach with a special summer baseball program in a small town in Iowa, Tackett, an editor in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, shares the journey of Merl Eberly, a "baseball whisperer" who nurtured young hopefuls dreaming of being big league players.
Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre Jeff Pearlman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN 978-0-544-45437-8
Skilled sports biographer Pearlman brings his dogged, onemore-phone-call approach to this massively enjoyable book on Brett Favre, the gambling, cannon-armed quarterback whose talent and boyish enthusiasm brought the Green Bay Packers back to hallowed relevance in the mid-1990s.
Hockey Strong: Stories of Sacrifice from Inside the NHL Todd Smith. Gallery. ISBN 978-1-5011-1834-0
Smith is a hockey fan and writes for the Minnesota Wild hockey team. Here he collects stories from players that demonstrate the lore of hockey toughness and playing through pain.
The Mannings: The Fall and Rise of a Football Family
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Lars Anderson. Ballantine. ISBN 978-1-1018-8382-2
An accomplished storyteller, Anderson writes about the Manning football legacy with style and verve, warts and all, backed by an abundance of research and scholarship.
Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant
Roland Lazenby. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-38724-8
The author of Michael Jordan; The Life turns his eye to another basketball legend: the recently retired Kobe Bryant, who was less a person than a basketball android.
THE ENTREPRENEUR
Business books for the industrious on your list
Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace Jessica Bennett. Harper Wave. ISBN 978-0-06-243978-9 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Bringing levity to common frustrations facing businesswomen, journalist Bennett describes how, in 2009, she and 11 other like-minded women founded the Feminist Fight Club in New York City. She identifies sexist archetypes like the "man-terrupter" ("he who won't shut up") and the "bropropriator" (he who "appropriates credit for another's work"), and lists "fight moves" for combating them.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Angela Duckworth. Scribner. ISBN 978-1-5011-1110-5
This New York Times bestseller from MacArthur Fellow Duckworth should be stuffing plenty of stockings come December. The book identifies the secret of high achievers as grit--a "combination of passion and perseverance"-- coupled to raw talent. Talent is important, she acknowledges, but talent multiplied by grit is what builds skill, and skill multiplied by grit equals achievement.
The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan Sebastian Mallaby. Penguin Press.
ISBN 978-1-59420-484-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Financial Times contributing editor Mallaby serves up a detailed portrait of one of the leading economic figures of our time, written with Greenspan's cooperation. According to this biography, Greenspan was neither the fabled maestro who mastered inflation nor the reviled incompetent who failed to anticipate the Great Recession.
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Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
Robert Cialdini. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-0979-9
The first solo work in more than three decades by psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Cialdini (Influence), this book proposes that the most successful persuaders are those who prime their audience for their message. Business readers should be fascinated by Cialdini's insights into how decisions are made, and left wondering whether decisions based solely on facts are even possible.
Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald's Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It Away
Lisa Napoli. Dutton. ISBN 978-1-101-98495-6
Aimed at anyone who loves a good love story behind a business success, this book recounts McDonald's founder Ray Kroc's marriage to his third wife, Joan. Arriving in November, it precedes the Weinstein Company's Kroc biopic, The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, by a month, so interest in the story behind the Golden Arches will be running high this season.
THE JOKESTER
Humor books sure to get laughs
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Carry This Book
Ahbi Jacobson. Viking. ISBN 978-0-7352-2159-8
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The star and creator of the television show Broad City imagines the items found inside the pockets, purses, bags, glove compartments, and junk drawers of famous people with colorful and quirky marker drawings.
How to Be Perfect: An Illustrated Guide
Ron Padgett, illus. by Jason Novak. Coffee House. ISBN 978-1-56689-455-5
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Jason Novak's gloriously bizarre doodles add new layers of interpretation to Ron Padgett's self-help poem.
How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All--and Then Some!
Elizabeth Newell, Sarah Pappalardo, and Anna Drezen. HarperOne. ISBN 978-0-06-243980-2
The writers behind the hilarious satirical website the Reductress skewer the most ridiculous tropes and cliches of millennial-era feminism in this send-up of advice books targeted at women.
Sad Animal Facts
Brooke Barker. Flatiron. ISBN 978-1-250-09508-4
This cleverly illustrated compendium of the Animal Kingdom's more unfortunate truths twists sardonic humor with biological factoids to great effect, and will no doubt draw comparisons to All My Friends Are Dead.
The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing Gavin Edwards. Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-9870-2
Rolling Stone's, contributing editor Edwards investigates comedian Bill Murray's off-kilter antics--such as the star's habit of randomly showing up in the most unexpected places, only to vanish just as quickly--and the philosophy behind them in this book bursting with anecdotes that underline Murray's unconventional and fun-loving lifestyle.
THE GOURMAND Get them cooking Appetites: A Cookbook
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Anthony Bourdain. Ecco. ISBN 978-0-06-240995-9 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Written with the no-holds-barred ethos of his renowned TV series No Reservations and Parts Unknown, the celebrity chef and culinary explorer's first cookbook in more than 10 years collects recipes for the home cook.
Cooking for Jeffrey
Ina Garten. Clarkson Potter. ISBN 978-0-307-46489-7 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The Barefoot Contessa pays tribute to her husband of 50 years (and fan favorite on her popular Food Network show) in her 10th cookbook. The book has all of the accessible but elegant recipes diehard Garten fans have come to expect, but also includes anecdotes about her relationship with her husband, from their very first meeting.
How to Bake Everything: Simple Recipes for the Best Baking
Mark Bittman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-470-52688-0 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The latest in Bittman's encyclopedic How to Cook Everything series is a comprehensive collection of 2,000 baking recipes.
Bittman breaks down the fundamentals and goes deep into the world of baking (there are 15 pages on pancakes alone, 10 varieties of fritters, and a savory section).
Mozza at Home: More than 150 Crowd-Pleasing Recipes for Relaxed, Family-Style Entertaining Nancy Silverton and Carolynn Carreno. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-385-35432-5
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Silverton, chef and co-owner of Mozza restaurant in L.A. (among others), shares her renewed passion for cooking for friends and family, and provides 19 menus, along with easy-to-follow recipes that can be prepared in advance.
Small Victories: Recipes, Advice, and Hundreds of Ideas for Home-Cooking Triumphs
Julia Turshen. Chronicle. ISBN 978-1-4251-4309-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Veteran food writer and recipe developer Turshen--who has worked on cookbooks with Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow--takes the reader through her process in developing recipes and how she gets them to work. The perfect gift for burgeoning home cooks.
THE DIYer
Books for the crafty
Akira Yoshizawa: Japan's Greatest Origami Master Robert J. Lang. Tuttle. ISBN 978-4-8053-1393-0 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This book celebrates the art and craftsmanship of origami by surveying the life and career of Akira Yoshizawa (1911- -2005), widely considered the father of modern origami, who pioneered techniques and notational systems widely used today.
Big Book of Knitted Mittens: 45 Distinctive Scandinavian Patterns
Jorid Linvik. Trafalgar Square. ISBN 978-1-57076-786-9
The latest from Norwegian knitwear designer Linvik includes creative patterns that play off traditional Scandinavian designs with funky colors and exotic animal motifs.
Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces Michelle Slatalla, with the editors of Gardenista, photos by Matthew Williams. Artisan. ISBN 978-1-57965-652-2
Aided by 480 color photographs, this beautiful book showcases innovative gardening concepts based upon real homes, highlighting details--the placement of beeswax tea candles, tablecloth clamps, and butterfly chairs--in harmony with
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shade trees, hedge shrubs, and stone walls.
Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop Nick Offerman. Dutton. ISBN 9781-101-98465-9 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Readers get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the East Los Angeles woodshop run by actor, comedian, and writer Offerman and his ragtag team of woodworkers, along with instructions for a variety of projects for every skill level.
Kaffe Fassett's Bold Blooms: Quilts and Other Works Celebrating Flowers
Kaffe Bassett, with Liza Prior Lucy, photos by Debbie Patterson. Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-2236-3
Textile designer Fassett celebrates the special role flowers play in inspiring his vibrant fabrics and other works of art in this beautiful coffee-table book that includes instructions for quilting and needlepoint basics as well as templates.
THE HOST OR HOSTESS
Cocktail and entertaining books for holiday revelry
The Art of the Cheese Plate: Pairings, Recipes, Style, Attitude Tia Keenan. Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-4982-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Keenan knows her way around a cheese plate. The chef-fromager designed the cheese program for Danny Meyer's the Modern and has created pairings for Murray's Cheese, both in New York City. She offers up no-fail-but-unexpected pairings and easy recipes for elegant cheese plates and seamless hosting.
Spritz: Italy's Most Iconic Aperitivo Cocktail, with Recipes
Talia Baiocchi and Leslie Pariseau. Ten Speed. ISBN 978-1-60774-885-4
A dreamy journey through the history of Italy's aperitivo, from its origins to the drink's revival in recent years. The book includes dozens of recipes for the cocktail--orthodox and with a twist--along with bar snacks to nibble alongside.
The Thinking Girl's Guide to Drinking (Cocktails Without Regrets) Ariane Resnick, with Brittini Rae. Regan Arts. ISBN 978-1-68245-048-2
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Give the gift of more mindful merriment this year--Resnick and Rae draw up recipes for cocktails and mocktails that use healthier alternatives to high-sugar, high-fat, artificially flavored drinks. Recipes include Lavender Spa Lemonade, Bionic Tonic, Ginger Scene Queen, and Mocha Truffle Shot.
Whisky Japan: The Essential Guide to the World's Most Exotic Whisky
Dominic Roskrow. Kodansha, ISBN 978-1-56386-575-6
Roskrow takes readers into the world of Japanese whisky as it becomes ever more popular across the globe.
ADULT COLORING BOOKS AS GIFTS
The adult coloring book phenomenon may be cooling off a bit, but they're sure to show up in a stocking or two this year. We've got picks for color-crazed fans of all persuasions.
For the Explorer
To The Ocean Deep
Sarah Yoon. Laurence King. ISBN 978-1-7-806-7770-5
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A fold-out coloring book that takes you to the depths of the ocean with images of sea dragons, mermaids, aqua robots, and sharks.
For the Art Connoisseur
Color the Classics
Art Institute of Chicago. Sourcebooks. ISBN 978-1-4926-4714-0
Works by Edward Hopper, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, and others. All of the masterpieces are part of the Art Institute of Chicago catalogue.
For Families
Together: A Mommy + Me Coloring Book
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Stacie Bloomfield. Paige Tate. ISBN 978-1-944515-35-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Twenty-six animal illustrations, each presented with a version for an adult and one for a child, from the illustrator behind the stationery company Gingiber.
For the Austenian
Color Me Jane: A Jane Austen Adult Coloring Book
Jacqui Oakley. Clarkson Potter. ISBN 978-0-451-49656-0 Elizabeth and Darcy,
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Anne and Captain Wentworth, Emma and Mr. Knightly, all in Regency-inspired fashion. The book includes scenes from Austen's most famous novels, among them Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, with eight pullout posters.
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For the TV Buff
HBO's Game of Thrones Coloring Book Chronicle. ISBN 978-1-4521-5430-5
The official tie-in coloring book to the series, with character portraits, as well as cityscapes and landscapes of the Seven Kingdoms
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For the Outdoorsy
The National Parks Coloring Book
Sophie Tivona. Harper Design. ISBN 978-0-06-256001-8 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Shade in the marshlands of the Everglades, Yellowstone's geysers, the mountains in Yosemite, and the coastal tide pools of Acadia, and scenes from all 59 of the country's national parks. The book, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service, also features illustrations of native plant and Animal life, and facts about each park.
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For the Foodie
A Cozy Coloring Cookbook: 40 Simple Recipes to Cook, Eat & Color
Adrianna Adarme. Rodale. ISBN 978-1-62336-832-6
The author of The Year of Cozy teams up with illustrator Amber Day to create a cookbook and coloring book hybrid. Each of the 40 recipes are accompanied by black-and-white line drawings you can color while in the kitchen, or not.
For the Music Lover
David Bowie Retrospective and Coloring Book
Mel Elliott. Watson-Guptill. ISBN 978-0-399-57911-0
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This illustrated book looks back at the late musician's many unforgettable personas and styles, from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke. The book is peppered throughout with insights into his designer collaborations and sartorial inspirations.
For the Merrymaker
Johanna's Christmas: A Festive Coloring Book for Adults
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Johanna Basford. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-312930-1
Find the spirit of the season through Basford's tangles of ivy, dressed-up Christmas trees, and piles of gifts.
Very Merry Coloring
Adams Media. ISBN 978-1-4405-9848-7
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Twenty holiday cards, featuring festive mantles and balsam firs, can be torn out and framed or used as gift tags.
Illustrated gift books
Bring the runway, the big screen, and the strangest corners of the world to the coffee table this season. We've gathered beautifully packaged illustrated gift books for fans of all stripes--from the fashionista to the globetrotter.
This year, give the gift of ... Good Style
Barneys New York Christopher Bollen. Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-4852-2
The debut book from the luxury retailer, which spells out the 93-year-old store's influence on New York fashion and culture through 300 pages of classic advertisements, campaigns, events, and window displays. The book is edited by author and Interview Magazine editor-at-large Christopher Bollen, with an introduction by 'Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp.
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The Fashion of Film
Amber Jane Butchart. Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 978-1-78472-176-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fashion historian Amber Butchart surveys the last hundred years of big screen style, and how it has influenced the runway and consumer fashion--from how Audrey Hepburn shaped the work of Givenchy, to where we see Prada in Wes Anderson. Butchart lays out how crime film, musicals, art house cinema, and historical epics have all left traces on fashion through the years.
Stoppers: Photographs from My Life at Vogue
Phyllis Posnick. Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-2244-8
Posnick, who has been the executive fashion editor of Vogue for nearly 30 years, collects this book of fashion photo
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spreads. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour provides the foreword. The book offers a peek into the production process at the ultimate fashion magazine, and features work from an impressive roster of photographers, including Anton Corbijn, Patrick Demarchelier, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, and Irving Penn.
Wanderlust
Atlas Obscura:
An Explorer's Guide to the World's
Hidden Wonders
Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton.
Workman. ISBN 978-0-7611-6908-6
Time to rewrite your bucket list. This guide to the world's strangest and most fascinating places and sights takes you to the glowworm caves in New Zealand, Spain's Baby Jumping I Festival, and the bone museums in Italy. Based on the website of the same name, the book uses photographs, charts, maps, and detailed description to showcase 700 marvels of the world.
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Wild, Beautiful Places: Picture-Perfect Journeys Around the Globe
National Geographic.
ISBN 978-1-4262-1740-1
National Geographic photographers share some of their favorite shots from the world's most wild and remote places. Vintage photographs pulled from the National Geographic archives offer a peek into the way the Earth's most exotic locales looked many years ago.
A Day at the Movies
The Art of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Leah Gallo. Quirk.
ISBN 978-1-59474-943-8
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A visual tour of Tim Burton's film adaptation of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Chockfull of interviews, behind-the-scenes photography, and exclusive interviews, the book also includes introductions by director Burton and Peculiar Children series author Ransom Riggs.
The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop
Richard M. Isackes and Karen L. Maness. Regan Arts.
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ISBN 978-1-941393-08-6
A history of the painstakingly rendered backdrops of Hollywood's golden age--creating worlds for such classics as The Wizard ofOz, North by Northwest, Cleopatra, and The Sound of Music. Take a peek into the creation of painted backings, which acted as the very earliest tools of special effects for the major motion picture studios.
Robin Williams: A Singular Portrait, 1986-2002
Arthur Grace. Counterpoint. ISBN 978-1-61902-727-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
After meeting Robin Williams at a comedy club in 1986, photographer Arthur Grace and the late actor formed a close friendship. A selection of 150 photos tells the story of their relationship, showing, as the publisher says, "the real Robin Williams--the manic and happy, the pensive and weary, the engaged and disengaged."
Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie
Ralph McQuarrie. Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-1793-2
The definitive two-volume slipcase of Ralph McQuarrie's complete artwork for the Star Wars films. McQuarrie, designer of Darth Vader, C-3PO, and R2-D2, worked hand -in-hand with George Lucas to create the singular aesthetic of the saga.
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Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book: The Story of the Making of the Film Mel Brooks. Black Dog & Leventbal.
ISBN 978-0-316-31547-0
The legendary screenwriter, director, and comedian goes behind the scenes of the classic comedy with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and commentary. Among the many anecdotes is Brooks's recollection of the late Gene Wilder's performance in the film: "It all started with Gene Wilder, who was Dr. 'Frankenstein."
A Little Perspective
Diane Arbus: In the Beginning
Jeff L. Rosenheim. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-1-58839-595-5
A study of more than 100 of the provocative artist's early photographs, taken between 1956 and 1962, .half of which have never been published before. An exhibit of the same name premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in July.
In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100
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Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs
Grace Bonney. Artisan.
ISBN 978-1-57965-597-6
Profiles of more than 100 influential and successful women. In addition to hundreds of original photographs of women where they work, the book includes practical advice for making your own way.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Provocateur: Photographs Tyler Shields. Glitterati.
ISBN 978-1-943876-29-7
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Dubbed "Hollywood's Favorite Photographer," Shields is known for his feather-ruffling, boundary-pushing photography. This collection of his most compelling work includes a preface by actor Nathan Fillion and a foreword by fellow photographer Andrea Blanch.
Sante D'Orazio: Polaroids Sante D'Orazio. Chronicle.
ISBN 978-1-4521-5849-5
D'Orazio, whose photographs helped shape the aesthetic of 1990s glamour, exhibits the casual warm-ups for his official shoots in this collection of Polaroids. Subjects include Cindy Crawford, Angelina Jolie, Kate Moss, Keith Richards, and Julia Roberts.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Swanson, Clare. "Holiday gift guide 2016: whether you're searching for an absorbing mystery, a lavish coffee table
book, or something for a new reader, you've come to the right place." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 21+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166555&it=r&asid=d09553522e234ee1d06016779dfeb6e0. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466166555
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By Gaslight
Jen Baker
Booklist.
113.1 (Sept. 1, 2016): p53. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
By Gaslight. By Steven Price. Oct. 2016. 720p. Farrar, $28 (9780374160531).
A postmodern take on noir mysteries, Price's second novel caps out at more than 700 pages, dragging the astounded reader through a gaslight-era global chase that can only be described as labyrinthine. The hero-detective, William Pinkerton, son of the more famous Allan, suffers an inferiority complex and is driven to continue his father's unsuccessful search for Edward Shade, the aptly named villain of the story. Adam Foole, trickster and thief, leads William and the police through London's befogged underbelly--sticky sewers, blood-soaked basements, and decapitated heads floating in the Thames. That underbelly and its attendant gore provide the book's thematic focal point and the main clue to Shade's identity. The real highlight of the novel, though, is the mesmerizing writing style, which is difficult to decipher but lyrically rewarding and intensely evocative of setting and character. Intense, frustrating, and magical, this fragmented, paradoxical suspense story will appeal to particular readers who love Dickens or who relish the complexities of Martin Seay's The Mirror Thief (2016) and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010).---Jen Baker
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Baker, Jen. "By Gaslight." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 53. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463755123&it=r&asid=796f87a9a0d7fa4303f25948facd1a12. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463755123
about:blank Page 29 of 32
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By Gaslight
Publishers Weekly.
263.29 (July 18, 2016): p180. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* By Gaslight
Steven Price. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 (720p) ISBN 978-0-374-16053-1
Price's elegantly written, vividly evoked second novel (after Into That Darkness) marries historical suspense with literary sophistication. In 1885 London, a woman's dismembered body is identified as that of Charlotte Reckitt, a longtime grifter for whom two very different men are searching. William Pinkerton, the 39-year-old son of American detective-agency-founder Allan Pinkerton, is struggling to accept his larger-than-life father's recent death. Along with the agency, he has inherited the elder Pinkerton's obsession with Edward Shade, an elusive master criminal his father could never apprehend. Having received a letter from Reckitt requesting his help, thief and confidence man Adam Foole hopes to reunite with Charlotte, the lover he lost 10 years before but hasn't forgotten. Both men are obsessed with getting to the bottom of Charlotte's apparent demise: Pinkerton because he believed she could lead him to Shade, Foole because he harbored tender longings for her. As the two circle each other, each probes his own past and both realize they are more similar, and more closely connected, than they believed. With its intricate cat-and-mouse game, array of idiosyncratic characters, and brooding atmosphere, By Gaslight has much to please fans of both classic suspense and Victorian fiction. Yet Price's novel is entirely contemporary, and assuredly his own: a sweeping tale of hunter and hunted in which the most-dangerous pursuer is always the human heart. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"By Gaslight." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 180. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287485&it=r&asid=f4b38ab95f933e879c1917864890eda7 Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459287485
.
about:blank Page 30 of 32
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Omens in the Year of the Ox
M. Travis Lane
Fiddlehead.
.259 (Spring 2014): p116. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lane, M. Travis. "Omens in the Year of the Ox." Fiddlehead, Spring 2014, p. 116+. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA366275189&it=r&asid=38864f1b4a1acc9e93deb799fd49b282. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A366275189
about:blank Page 31 of 32
4/12/17, 1(00 PM
Anatomy of Keys
Nicholas Bradley
This Magazine.
40.1 (July-August 2006): p39. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2006 Red Maple Foundation http://www.thismagazine.ca/
Full Text:
Anatomy of Keys, by Steven Price (Brick Books)
In his remarkably ambitious first book of poetry, Steven Price depicts the life of Harry Houdini, revelling in the metaphorical richness of the escape artist's vocation. The poems reflect upon the meaning of imprisonment and freedom; in portraying Houdini's exploits, Price attempts to show that "the marvellous" can "interrupt our lives"--even if those lives are essentially tragic. His technical reach is impressive: He conjures all sorts of tricks, juggling a host of forms, voices and intriguingly unusual words such as kedge, fug, luffing, glistered and slub. Price's dedication to his subject is also admirable, but 140 pages is probably too much Houdini for most readers. In her recent memoir-in-verse, PK Page squeezed her own life into fewer than 100 pages; Anatomy of Keys would have been stronger had Price been so concise. But at its best, his account of an attempt to escape the sadness of the world is enchanting and moving.
Bradley, Nicholas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bradley, Nicholas. "Anatomy of Keys." This Magazine, July-Aug. 2006, p. 39. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA148319688&it=r&asid=8295eb482978aa938b4841a72b449f75. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A148319688
about:blank Page 32 of 32

Grabowski, William. "Price, Steven. By Gaslight." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 79. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466412959&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. Swanson, Clare. "Holiday gift guide 2016: whether you're searching for an absorbing mystery, a lavish coffee table book, or something for a new reader, you've come to the right place." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 21+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166555&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. Baker, Jen. "By Gaslight." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 53. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463755123&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. "By Gaslight." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 180. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287485&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. Lane, M. Travis. "Omens in the Year of the Ox." Fiddlehead, Spring 2014, p. 116+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA366275189&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. Bradley, Nicholas. "Anatomy of Keys." This Magazine, July-Aug. 2006, p. 39. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA148319688&it=r. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.

• NPR
  http://www.npr.org/2016/09/29/494927889/hardboiled-historical-noir-with-a-heart-in-by-gaslight
  Word count: 836

  Hardboiled Historical Noir With A Heart In 'By Gaslight'
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  September 29, 20167:00 AM ET
  JEAN ZIMMERMAN
  By Gaslight
  By Gaslight
  by Steven Price

  Hardcover, 731 pages purchase

  Every book can't be War and Peace. Readers may approach a doorstop novel of some 700-plus pages with a mixture of hope and dread: hope that the tome will offer a tale to relish, dread from being betrayed one too many times. By Gaslight, the second novel by award-winning Canadian poet Steven Price, proves engrossing enough to warrant its forest-depleting bulk. I found myself returning to passages not only because I occasionally lost the thread of this historical mystery's manifold plots, sub-plots and asides, but because I wanted to revisit the somber music of the telling.

  Chicago-based Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous (some would say infamous) detective agency that bore his name, has been a fixture of Civil War-era fiction and non-fiction alike. Pinkerton's legacy serves as the jumping off point for a high energy drama starring his son, a second-generation detective named William Pinkerton, who has taken over the business after the death of his father. Spinning fiction out of fact, Price creates an evocative world, cast not in shades of stark black and white, but rather in morally complex herringbone. Violence forever stalks the margins of the story, and we are privy to situations that that are both raw and beautiful, though always expressing the complexities of the human heart.

  By Gaslight kicks off in London, in February 1885: A woman's battered head has washed up on the bank of the Thames. She is identified as Charlotte Reckitt, a longtime member of the "flash scene," the city's teeming underground of shills, pickpockets and grifters. Still reeling from the recent death of his dominating father, 39-year-old William Pinkerton shows himself as something of a brute with heart. He's Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole for the gaslight era, embodying the requisite triad of character-defining traits for the postmodern detective hero: world weariness, barely controlled machismo and an aching, underlying sensitivity. And his grandiose reputation spans the globe. "In America there was not a thief who did not fear him. By his own measure he feared no man living and only one man dead and that man was his father."

  Not surprisingly for a poet turned fiction writer, Price clearly relishes his words: "costermongers in the mists" and "the shout of a patterer trotting along behind," or "picking out oakum with a spike."
  Jean Zimmerman
  William's abraded knuckles never quite heal, since he always seems to be fresh off of pummeling someone. He encounters Charlotte's severed head while following the spoor of the ominously named Edward Shade, who had long been a violent mote in eye of Pinkerton senior. Also in the mix is Adam Foole, a dapper crook with penetrating violet eyes and a traumatic childhood. Other over the top characters in By Gaslight include a kindly if bestial manservant named Japheth Fludd and a sure-fingered slip of a thief, Molly, whom Foole has adopted into his ring of criminals. All have a dark side, all keep close a multitude of secrets — and most sport names that Anthony Trollope would be proud of.

  Set primarily in Victorian London, with side trips to the American Civil War and to the diamond mines of South Africa, By Gaslight is aimed directly at fans of historical noir fiction. A pulpy séance, the impossible theft of a famous painting and an early hot-air balloon ride over battlefield gore offer the kind of set-pieces that show off Price's talent for fantastical detail. Who knew a fortune could be made in ostrich feathers, as one character does here?

  Not surprisingly for a poet turned fiction writer, Price clearly relishes his words: "costermongers in the mists" and "the shout of a patterer trotting along behind," or "picking out oakum with a spike." The specialty of the house is gorgeous descriptions, with fog, rain and frost repeatedly evoked to set the scene. "The rain deepened. A hansom took him languidly through the wet and the chill and he watched the horse's wet haunches slide luminous in the sheeted water. He felt the shake of water from the reins passing through their guides, heard the crunch and splash of wheels on the stone streets."

  A Scotland Yard inspector describes William as a "notorious American detective turned vigilante." He packs a punch that is just as lethal, in its way, as one from the more restrained Sherlock Holmes, and By Gaslight can be seen as Arthur Conan Doyle by way of Dickens by way of Faulkner. Intense, London-centric, threaded through with a melancholy brilliance, it is an extravagant novel that takes inspiration from the classics and yet remains wholly itself.

  Jean Zimmerman's latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin.

• By Quill and Quire
  http://www.quillandquire.com/review/by-gaslight/
  Word count: 860

  By Gaslight

  by Steven Price

  Steven Price’s By Gaslight is a 19th-century sensation novel rewritten with a noir sensibility: Wilkie Collins meets Raymond Chandler. And it goes some way toward meeting our expectations for books of that kind – that is, for long, twisty tales of the Victorian underworld. Foggy atmosphere? Check. Abundant period details? Check. Resolute detectives, colourful criminals, dangerously beguiling women? Check, check, check. In fact, as a neo-Victorian mystery it is nearly perfect. Its plot is a maze of misdirection; its protagonists claw their way through it burdened by secrets and confounded by lies; it offers revelations but not salvation. It’s formulaic, but expansively so, and it reworks these familiar elements with style and originality.

  By Gaslight Steven Price July 2016 reviewsBy Gaslight tells the intertwined stories of two men on opposite sides of the law. One is William Pinkerton, who has taken over the Pinkerton Detective Agency following the death of its founder, his father Allan. The other is Adam Foole, an elegant grifter from the “flash world.” Their paths cross during William’s search for the mysterious and elusive Edward Shade, whom William’s father had spent years futilely tracking. “Who was Edward Shade?” says Allan’s old associate Sally Porter. “No one knew. No one had ever seen him.” Every account William hears is different. Is Shade real or a figment, alive or dead? And why does finding him matter so much? “What is it you huntin’ for?” Sally demands. The real answer lies somewhere deep in William’s troubled relationship with his father.

  The initial link between William and Adam is Charlotte Reckitt, William’s “one certain lead” on Shade. With her “small sharp teeth, long white fingers,” and a “voice low and vicious and lovely,” she sounds like a classic femme fatale, but as William closes in, she herself inexplicably takes a fatal leap into the Thames. The gruesome discovery of what appear to be her remains compounds the mystery: how did a drowning victim end up dismembered? Why, and how, did she cut off her hair?

  William’s inquiries bring him into contact with Foole, who is interested in Charlotte for reasons of his own. The two men become unlikely – and mutually suspicious – allies in the quest for the truth about her fate, an investigation that eventually also reveals the perilous hidden connections between their own histories and the truth about Edward Shade.

  Solving the novel’s puzzles requires not just detection in its Victorian present but exploration of the past. A series of flashbacks takes us, most significantly, to America during the Civil War, which is the crucible in which all of the novel’s main characters were formed – or, more accurately, deformed.

  For all its panache as a historical thriller, By Gaslight is strongest as a war novel. Elsewhere, Price’s prose can seem mannered and artificial, and he relies heavily on the trick of conspicuous withholding to create his suspenseful effects. But the writing becomes urgently gripping in the chaos of battle, where “the world dissolved into flame and smoke and a shuddering earth,” and amid the horrors of its aftermath, where we see “boys with their bowels shot out doubled over and seething with the pain” while “a slow foaming gutter of blood” runs across a gore-soaked tent. Price emphasizes, too, that the dead are not war’s only victims: the survivors all struggle to restore themselves in a world that, though technically at peace, is riven by violence and murky with corruption.

  By Gaslight is an engrossing read. The twists and turns deepen our understanding of the characters even as they advance multiple plot strands, and Price immerses us in a world of sights and smells so precisely rendered they are nearly tangible. The language flirts with flamboyance and drifts occasionally into awkward archaisms, but at its best it is both elegant and concrete.

  The novel is limited, however, by having no broader perspective: nothing carries us beyond the characters to give their stories thematic resonance of the sort that motivates the great 19th-century novels to which By Gaslight is so indebted. “There are confluences in a life, moments of deep exchange between strangers,” thinks Edward Shade, “when the strands of two different fates draw together and the cutting of one necessitates the cutting of another.” “What connexion can there have been,” asks the narrator of Dickens’s Bleak House, “between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!” Both novels explore the intricate ways individual lives are interwoven, but unlike Dickens, Price does not illuminate the social, moral, or political significance of the patterns they form. By Gaslight keeps us shrouded in its own bleak, atmospheric fog – intrigued, entertained, but not enlightened.

  Reviewer: Rohan Maitzen
  Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
  DETAILS

  Price: $35
  Page Count: 752 pp
  Format: Cloth
  ISBN: 978-0-77106-923-9
  Released: Aug.
  Issue Date: July 2016
  Categories: Fiction: Novels

• The Globe and Mail
  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/review-steven-prices-by-gaslight-pulls-out-all-the-stops/article31463805/
  Word count: 801

  Review: Steven Price’s By Gaslight pulls out all the stops
  IAN WEIR
  Special to The Globe and Mail
  Published Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 11:32AM EDT
  Last updated Thursday, Dec. 01, 2016 1:58PM EST
  0 Comments Print

  Title By Gaslight
  Author Steven Price
  Genre fiction
  Publisher McClelland & Stewart
  Pages 731
  Price $36
  ISBN 0771069235
  Year 2016
  Steven Price’s debut novel, 2011’s Into That Darkness, was a taut thriller set in modern-day Victoria, in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake. But, By Gaslight, his remarkable second novel, is the Big One indeed: a mighty steam engine of a thriller that pulls out all the stops, cutting through fog-shrouded London in 1885 – and spanning five decades and half the globe, besides – as America’s most-feared detective hunts down a master criminal whose existence has been intertwined with his own in ways that he can scarcely begin to imagine.

  The detective is William Pinkerton, whose recently deceased father was indeed that Pinkerton: Allan, the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He has come to London – which he loathes as a city whose “cobbled streets were filthy even to a man whose business was filth” – on the trail of an elusive thief known as Edward Shade. Shade is more myth than man, as the quest begins: not a man “so much as a shadow, an echo of a man who may never have existed.” But Shade obsessed Pinkerton pere for decades, and now the obsession has passed to the son.

  William is half-myth himself, at least to the criminal underworld: “a wisp, a rumour, a creature of nightmare walking the flash world, frightening all.” The hunt draws him into an uneasy alliance with Adam Foole, a thief and con artist with an obsessive quest of his own: he has returned to London in search of his lost love, a grifter named Charlotte Reckitt. As the quest twists and snakes through the metropolis – and deep into the past – it grows evident that Foole, too, has been shaped by a connection to Allan Pinkerton, dating back to the old man’s days as a spymaster in the American Civil War.

  An award-winning poet, Price has a gift for the telling detail; this novel is a feast of language. A corrupt solicitor has “hard little eyes like the heads of nails, creased in the folds of his face, as if driven in”; gazing across the Thames toward the Albert Embankment, the detective sees “the silhouettes of lampposts with arms upraised like crucified thieves.”

  Price’s ear for Victorian underworld slang is keen, give or take the odd glitch (his cracksmen and magsmen seem to take “the beak” to refer to constables, not magistrates). But overall, By Gaslight wears its erudition with flair and admirable lightness. The novel abounds in exhilarating set-pieces – a seance that takes an alarming turn; an untethered balloon ride over a Civil War slaughter; the near-obligatory descent into Bazalgette’s sewers – and a supporting cast of vividly conjured grotesques.

  Price cheekily invites comparison to such monuments as The Woman in White and The Moonstone, when a Chief Inspector disparages an underling as “a reader of sensation novels … That Wilkie Collins and the like.” And indeed the clockwork of the storytelling is intricate and ingenious. I found myself fighting the temptation to flip ahead to the end of chapters, where (sure enough!) exquisite reveals and reversals awaited – no small feat in a novel that never sacrifices integrity for payoff.

  Despite the skill of the storytelling, though, By Gaslight does not set out to break new ground. Wilkie Collins was no Dickens as a literary artist, but he defined a narrative tradition. Ditto the likes of Conan Doyle – who makes a delightfully uncredited cameo appearance in By Gaslight as a “burly doctor from Edinburgh” who is fascinated by spiritualism and fed up with “detective stories dependent on the foolishness of the criminal.”

  The narrative touches on themes relating to grief and loss, and the relationship of sons to fathers. There are nods as well to the nature of truth and storytelling, the unreliability of memory, and the conundrum of appearance and reality. But it is difficult to say what these add up to, in the end. The novel – for all of its force and ingenuity – struggles to reach beyond its own specifics.

  But those specifics are splendid, nonetheless. And it is a tribute to Price’s skill and power that we never – well, almost never – pause to ask whether the novel really needed every last one of its nearly 750 exquisitely crafted pages.

  Ian Weir is the author of the novels Daniel O’Thunder and Will Starling.

  Report Typo/Error

• University of Victoria Fine Arts
  https://finearts.uvic.ca/research/blog/2016/09/13/strong-buzz-around-steven-prices-new-novel/
  Word count: 676

  Strong buzz around Steven Price’s new novel
  by John Threlfall | Sep 13, 2016 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Writing |
  It’s the kind of buzz emerging authors can only dream about: after being sold to American publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2014 for “a figure rumoured to be in the substantial six-figure range,” the latest novel by noted poet, author & stellar Department of Writing grad Steven Price is now set to launch. And by all reports, Price’s 19th century literary historical suspense novel By Gaslight is living up to the hype—it’s already been announced as being one of 12 books on the 2016 Giller Prize longlist.
  by-gaslightBy Gaslight launches locally at 7:30pm Tuesday, Sept 13, at Munro’s Books, and Price will be one of the featured writers at the Sept 21-25 Victoria Festival of Authors, as well as the Oct 17-23 Vancouver Writers Fest.
  Reviewed by the Globe & Mail as “a mighty steam engine of a thriller that pulls out all the stops,” Price’s By Gaslight drops the reader into foggy 1885 London where detective William Pinkerton is on the trail of ghostly notorious thief and fabled con Edward Shade; meanwhile, Adam Foole—a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone—returns to London in search of his long-lost love. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, drawing rooms, and seance halls; told over two decades, Price takes readers into South Africa’s diamond mines, onto the battlefields of the US Civil War and through the opium dens of Victorian London. But By Gaslight is ultimately the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade.
  Described as “epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written,” By Gaslight is earning critical kudos (“Wilkie Collins meets Raymond Chandler . . . as a neo-Victorian mystery it is nearly perfect” says Quill & Quire), with international rights already sold and unconfirmed rumours of a film deal in the works. Back in 2014, Price downplayed the sales figure when he spoke to the Times Colonist. “The sum of money seems like it’s a notable thing,” he said. “But I think what’s really exciting for me is the vote of confidence an American publisher would have in a Canadian poet. That they’d be willing to invest in a novel by a relative unknown.”
  Steven Price (C Centric Photography)
  Steven Price (C Centric Photography)
  Price’s first novel, Into That Darkness was published in 2011 and is set in post-earthquake Victoria. He is also the author of two award-winning poetry books, Anatomy of Keys (2006, Gerald Lampert Award) and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012, ReLit Award). A long-standing sessional instructor with UVic’s Writing department, Price is also married to Giller Prize-winning novelist and Writing alum Esi Edugyan.
  Interestingly, given the detective/thief focus of By Gaslight, his family runs Price’s Alarms—Canada’s oldest privately owned security company. Price told the Times Colonist that he was inspired to write By Gaslight after a conversation with a reclusive great-uncle, who told him a story about his great-grandfather, an English gunsmith and locksmith who founded the Price alarm company more than a century ago. “[My great-uncle] said something about how my great-grandfather had gotten in trouble with the law in London and fled England. He got to Canada and he kept going west, trying to make sure he wasn’t chased or caught.”
  True story or not, Price then became interested in the idea of a literary character who is essentially a good person despite having a checkered past. Inspiration also came from Edugyan herself, who said to him, “If you don’t know whether it will be published, whatever you work on next, it really should be something you want to write.” Says Price, “So I just tried to sit down every day and write some pages that I would have liked to have read.”

• Newswire
  http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/mcclelland--stewart-acquires-novel-from-award-winning-canadian-poet-steven-price-516364281.html
  Word count: 333

  McClelland & Stewart Acquires Novel from Award-winning Canadian Poet Steven Price

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  TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2014 /CNW/ - McClelland and Stewart is very pleased to announce that, after a strongly competitive auction with three other Canadian houses, publisher Ellen Seligman has acquired, in a two-book deal, By Gaslight, a literary historical suspense novel by award-winning Canadian poet Steven Price. Agent Ellen Levine of Trident Media Group arranged the sale. One of the most talked-about books of the Frankfurt Book Fair, By Gaslight was also recently acquired at auction by Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States and by Juliet Mabey of Oneworld in London. Translation rights have, to date, been bought by Bompiani in Italy and by Diogenes in Germany. Other international rights sales are expected to be announced soon.

  "The novel is just astonishing, absolutely dazzling," says Seligman, who will also be the editor for the book."It has everything -- brilliant writing, surprise, palpable atmosphere and sustained tension, psychological depth and complexity. Steven's characters come immediately alive on the page and just keep gaining and gaining dimension. By Gaslight is a literary tour de force, as is fast becoming recognized around the world."

  Set in 1885, three years before the Whitechapel killings in London, By Gaslight centres on the complex relationship between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, a thief whose past is inextricably linked with Pinkerton's own. The novel spans twenty years and travels between the diamond mines of South Africa in the 1870s, the battlefields of the Civil War, and the opium dens and sewers of late Victorian London.

  Steven Price is the author of two poetry books, Anatomy of Keys (2006), winner of the Gerald Lampert Award, and Omens in the Year of the Ox (2012), winner of the ReLit Award. His first novel, Into That Darkness, was published to acclaim in 2011. He lives in Victoria, B.C.

• National Post
  http://news.nationalpost.com/afterword/book-review-into-that-darkness-by-steven-price
  Word count: 764

  Book Review: Into That Darkness, by Steven Price

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  Into That Darkness
  By Steven Price
  Thomas Allen Publishers
  240 pp; $22.95

  Reviewed by Robert J. Wiersema

  The world changes in an instant, shuddering and crumbling without warning. Those of us fortunate enough to be at a distance have watched it happen recently, in Haiti, Japan and elsewhere. We’ve seen the footage, we’ve made our donations. Safely removed, we let tragedy touch us, but, in most cases, not change us. The unimaginable remains just that.

  Into That Darkness, the brilliant debut novel from prize-winning Victoria poet Steven Price, takes the unimaginable and makes it real — terrifyingly so. By immersing readers within a world torn asunder, without voice-overs and commentaries and 1-800-to-donate lines, Price lays bare both the horror of a natural disaster and the utterly real human reactions, for good and ill.

  On his way to the tobacconist’s in downtown Victoria, Arthur Lear, an aging artist, makes eye contact with a small boy in the window of a coffee shop. When he places his order, he learns that the boy is the son of the woman working behind the counter, who chases him down after he forgets his wallet. It’s the sort of interaction everyone takes for granted, that is usually forgotten moments later.

  Not, however, when the world ends.

  “His legs were trembling. The tobacconist was still speaking and there was no sound and he watched her mouth and then all at once there was a great roaring in his ears. Car alarms along the street began to screech. The glass jars were rattling. Then his knees buckled and he grabbed at the pitching countertop, he looked out in time to see a car leap in the street beyond and the asphalt crest like a wave and then like that it was upon them.”

  In the aftermath of the earthquake, with Victoria in chaos and ruins, Lear is part of the small crew that rescues the boy from the collapsed building. He had been trapped with his mother, from whose seemingly lifeless body Lear takes him. The boy, Mason, clings to Arthur in the following days, and compels him into what Lear initially thinks will be a fruitless search for his mother.

  Unbeknownst to Lear and Mason, the boy’s mother, Anna, was discovered to be alive in the rubble and extricated a few hours after Mason. Despite grievous injuries, Anna ventures into the ruins in search of her family: Mason, and his older sister.

  Price effortlessly creates not only the ruination of the post-earthquake world and the fragile society that develops and falters, almost immediately, upon the ashes, but also a range of characters that all burst fully formed from the book’s pages. Lear, for example, is a wealth of contradictions, rooted in a life of loss and pain and his new relationship with the boy in his care. Even Mason, who as a child would seem to be more challenging to present as a compelling character in his own right, is richly rendered and complex.

  The novel unfolds with a measured though compulsive pace, rooted in a style rooted clearly in Price’s experience as a poet. There is not a word wasted in Into That Darkness, and every sentence is at once carefully crafted and seemingly effortless. The book never bogs down into syntactic excesses, but the care and attention to language is clear. The prose is precise, yet evocative and haunting, a tricky balance to strike which Price manages with aplomb.

  Into That Darkness is many things: a novel of survival, a collection of post-apocalyptic quests, an account of loss in its myriad forms, and of hope at its most vital and true. It’s a fundamentally human work that draws deep into the soul and the spirit. It is also that rarest of books, a literary novel with the narrative momentum of genre or commercial writing. It is, above all, compelling and real, a novel that will satisfy at every level.

  • Robert J. Wiersema is the author of, most recently, Bedtime Story.

• Kirkus Reviews
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/steven-price/by-gaslight/
  Word count: 388

  BY GASLIGHT
  by Steven Price
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  KIRKUS REVIEW

  Canadian poet Price turns to fiction with this lively visitation to the foggy streets of Victorian Blighty.

  “Water in the cracks, water shimmering like mercury at the edges of the light-fall. There were streaks of black moss growing on the walls where moisture trickled.” Atmospheric: that just begins to describe this overstuffed, long, but swiftly paced novel, which works from a promising premise, in which the already famed private detective William Pinkerton, late of the Civil War and capable of striking fear in the heart of every wrongdoer in America, finds himself in London on the trail of a slippery con man with the suggestive name of Edward Shade. Shade’s more than just a bilko; the tentacles of his criminal enterprise extend everywhere, and somehow they’ve wrapped themselves around a woman with “small sharp teeth, long white fingers, a voice low and vicious and lovely.” Charlotte Reckitt has a past piled on a past, only a bit of which overlaps with that of Adam Foole, a fine gentleman blessed of “glowing catlike stare” now newly entangled in Charlotte’s web once again. Pinkerton, Foole, and a “giant” named Japheth Flood form an unlikely alliance and sally forth to ferret out Shade and Reckitt, each for his own reasons, in the dripping streets and sewers of a decidedly Dickensian London. Price serves up a whodunit that’s sometimes a little faltering of plot but long on lyricism: “He sipped his port and William watched the morning light flare and fracture in the cut glass but he himself did not drink and he held the delicate glass between his thick fingers feeling rough and tired.” In the end, the story is utterly Sherlock-ian—read Moriarty for Shade and Irene Adler for Reckitt—and postmodernly so, full of sly nods and winks and allusions. If it is derivative in the bargain, Conan Doyle by way of Nicholas Meyer and Benedict Cumberbatch, then Price’s yarn is also a lot of fun.

  Fans of steampunk and Victorian detective fiction alike will enjoy Price’s continent-hopping romp in time.

• The Winnipeg Review
  http://winnipegreview.com/2011/05/‘into-that-darkness’-by-steven-price/
  Word count: 1075

  ‘Into That Darkness’ by Steven Price
  Posted: MAY 19, 2011
  Book Reviews

  Reviewed by Michelle Berry

  Steven Price, whose poetry collection Anatomy of Keys won the Gerald Lampert Award and was named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year in 2006, has recently published his first novel. Into That Darkness is a harrowing tale. It is an apocalyptic read— spell-binding, frustrating and darkly epic. Imagine, if you will, the end of the world, a Mad Max movie combined with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Now throw in an earthquake that rocks the entire west coast of North America. Give the whole scenario a slightly off-kilter, dream(nightmare)-like feeling. Then toss in an old man, a young boy and an injured mother and… ta da … you have Into That Darkness.

  Price has given us fiction, of course, but the recent quakes around the world, the tsunamis, the hurricanes and floods, force us to read this novel with a sharp, present, heart-breaking perspective. We’ve seen something like this in the news or maybe we’ve experienced it personally. These scenarios are a horrible reality, they are happening all the time, all around us. Price’s mixture of this reality with his imagination makes for a wrenchingly beautiful but very difficult story. This would be a feat for any fiction writer, let alone a first novelist.

  Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Lear has gone out to buy cigars. Ten-year-old Mason has been suspended from a school field trip and is hanging out with his mother, Anna Mercia, in her coffee shop, which is directly beside the tobacconist’s shop. It is a calm fall morning in Victoria, BC. Suddenly the quake hits: “Car alarms along the street began to screech. The glass jars were rattling. Then his [Arthur’s] knees buckled and he grabbed at the pitching countertops, he looked out in time to see a car leap in the street beyond and the asphalt crest like a wave and then like that it was upon them.” Anna Mercia and Mason are trapped underground and Arthur begins the often futile process of helping with the rescue teams. Eventually he rescues Mason and they set off through the devastation hoping to find Mason’s sister, Kat, and then later, hoping to find Anna Mercia.

  The old man and the young boy traveling down deserted and dangerous roads, coming across looters and scavengers, reminds one of The Road. That constant threat lurking everywhere, hidden people watching from blackened windows. That silence all around. The dust, the destruction, the death.

  Price evokes smell and sight and sound throughout the rescue and the walk:

  A great fetid whoosh of air walloped past them and out up the tunnel and the old man coughed in the black reek and the headlamps were bending weirdly off the bricks and broken furniture beyond and the shapes wavered in the glare and then the light steadied and the old man squinted to see what lay within.

  But what really compares to The Road is when Anna Mercia awakes in a field of corpses (she was thrown there because she appeared to be dead). Stumbling out of the decay she makes her way back to her house thinking that both her children, Mason and Kat, will go there to find her, but, instead of her children she finds an evil almost unbearable to comprehend. This part is certainly very difficult to read. People in this novel sink quickly down into their basest forms, they become animals, their eat-or-be-eaten survival mechanisms kick in. They rapidly become immoral, or perhaps their immorality is now given the freedom to exist – there are no laws. There is no structure. There is nothing.

  Each of these three characters, Arthur, Mason and Anna Mercia, walk a great distance, figuratively and literally. Price has interspersed chapters of the past, of their previous lives, within their journey forward. The point of view of each of the three characters is given voice in turns. We see where they came from, what they were like before the quake, and how their journey now changes them.

  This novel is a real feat. It is visceral. You feel this book creep into your very organs while you read.

  That doesn’t mean it is without small problems. Often Into That Darkness is unbelievable, but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief – after all, you can’t know what would happen until it happens. Maybe it only takes four days for people to start murdering each other in a situation like this? I don’t know. Maybe the rest of the world wouldn’t help out as quickly as I think they would? Again, I don’t know and hope I never have to. I can easily put some factual realities aside for great fiction.

  However, I can’t ignore one criticism I have of this novel. Because of the dream-like quality of Price’s prose, because of the constant forward motio— his characters are actually physically moving forward throughout the whole book— when the author suddenly takes sixteen pages to have his main character, Arthur, tell a story to Anna Mercia about a geologist and a creationist and their loss (and gain) of faith, no matter how thought-provoking and interesting that story is, no matter how much we need to know about faith and science, those sixteen pages stop the plot. Seize it up like a bad leg cramp. Edit those sixteen pages down to, perhaps, three (a nice little story Arthur might just mention in passing) and this is one fine, thought-provoking book. Because, Steven Price, you don’t have to come out and tell me about different ways of interpreting disasters, about all kinds of perceptions of all kinds of faith, you’ve already illustrated that so subtly and maturely throughout the entire novel. In fact, the sixteen page story Arthur tells is easily summed up in Price’s lines: “The old man sat and she sat with him and they waited like that as if guests in a house not of their choosing. Which in a way they were. As are all the living in this world.”

  Into That Darkness has small faults (within big geological faults – sorry, it had to be said), but it is a superb novel.

• Literary Review Canada
  http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2012/03/descent-into-hell/
  Word count: 1444

  Descent into Hell
  What if a major quake hit British Columbia?
  CAROL BRUNEAU
  Into That Darkness
  Steven Price
  Thomas Allen
  273 pages, softcover
  ISBN 9780887627378

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  LRCv20n2March2012cover
  March 2012

  Imagine—science was right: the Big One hits the West Coast, decimating Victoria. Anarchy rules. Most of the population is buried alive or burned in the inferno from ruptured gas lines; no organized aid groups or military arrive to unearth survivors or dispose of bodies. A tilting Empress Hotel is the last vestige of civility as media vultures hover seeking “prey” to amuse a missing—dead?—audience. Bloodlust reigns, and an animal survival instinct. Such is the post-apocalyptic vision of Victoria poet Steven Price’s speculative first novel, Into That Darkness.
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  Fledgling
  Exploiting an imminent what-if, the book, published eerily on the heels of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, pits an urgent certainty against the randomness of such events in the Earth’s natural history. Science figures largely in Price’s narrative, although his dog-eat-dog Mad Max world is no farfetched sci-fi invention but one made tangible by its contemporary references. There are echoes of Atwood’s genetically engineered dystopia in The Year of the Flood in Price’s references to religion, for religion figures largely too, as tied to humanity’s history as geology is to Nature’s. A postmodern exploration of traditional dualities—light versus darkness, goodness versus evil, belief versus unbelief—Price’s book is unwaveringly polemical.
  Blending hyperrealism, allegory and meta-fiction, the novel zeroes in on the lingering question after every catastrophe: if there is a God, why does he or she allow such suffering? Price poses it baldly, entertaining polar responses: the nihilist’s self-cleaning Easy-Bake Oven of an answer, that there is no god and if there was, why would he or she care; and the Christian’s more challenging one, that when humanity suffers so does all of creation including the God whose goodness is manifest in people’s helping hands. It is a mystery that defies resolution and finds little here except in Price’s, and his protagonist’s, affirmation of Nature’s resilience.
  But there is hell to be gotten through first, then purgatory, before the tiniest glimmer of hope that might suggest paradiso. Dante’s Divine Comedy is the central trope subverted in what becomes an absurdist human “comedy” whose circus sideshow aspects recall Price’s brilliant poetry collection, Anatomy of Keys, centred on escape artist Harry Houdini. Amid chaos a skewed order prevails. As the believer who appears in Darkness’s purgatory declares, “coincidence is just another word for providence … Except it’s not so frightening.”
  The novel’s “hero” (as in the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” that pop send-up of pop fiction) is a man named Lear: Arthur Lear, a former painter who at 69 is an “old man.” His Shakespearian preoccupations with aging and grief are trumped yet intensified when the ground gives way and he is buried alive with Aza the tobacconist, former model for his dead ex-wife Callie, a sculptor, minutes after barista Anna Mercia, until then a stranger, returns the wallet he had left in her coffee shop. He digs himself out and manages to save Mason, Anna Mercia’s ten-year-old son, while leaving her for dead.
  Thus begins the chain of coincidences that draws us through the inferno, a hellish mash-up of horrific realism and vaudeville as Arthur reluctantly helps Mason locate his mum, who is very much alive, and just as hesitantly helps Anna Mercia find Kat, her missing teenage daughter. Price delivers the principal points of view—Arthur’s, Mason’s and Anna Mercia’s—in a dispassionate limited third-person voice alternating with their interior monologues, which are rawly confessional. Just as Arthur represents everyman, self-concerned but basically decent, Mason signifies innocence easily corrupted, and Anna Mercia the relativist whose survival instincts dominate. Their tale is a five-day existentialist pilgrimage toward some sort of light, even as time itself blurs, the only constant the devastation. If there is a plan—and Price’s formalism mimics one—it is neither good nor evil. “It is what it is,” says the custodian in the penultimate scene, the purgatory of the church of his boyhood that Arthur finds himself in.
  If events strain our suspension of disbelief, we are not to judge them, no matter how easy, how blanket the oppositions occasionally feel. For better or worse they serve an allegorical purpose: the waffling between despair and hope that presses Arthur onward through the rubble. Separating the halves of his unwelcome quest—helping first to find Anna Mercia, then Anna Mercia’s daughter—a narrative fault line splits the action: a lengthy metafictional fable he tells her about a creationist and a scientist who become friends and reverse their positions. To say that it flattens the drama is being kind. For all its postmodernism—that determination to overturn various literary conventions—the novel caves here to the didacticism of a conventional antecedent, Hugh MacLennan’s 1941 novel Barometer Rising about the 1917 Halifax explosion. But Price’s problem is less MacLennan’s—that of using catastrophe as deus ex machina—than of making characters serve as mouthpieces to debate a point.
  Much more gripping, and redemptive, are the passages in which Price’s hyperreal imagery and perfectly paced language provoke in us a dizzying visceral response to what is happening. Our identification with the characters is less emotional than animal; we feel as Arthur does the first warning tremor, the uncanny stillness before things collapse. We feel sickened yet riveted to the near–pornographic violence when Anna Mercia is violated by and then castrates the barber (Dante’s demonic Barbariccia?) who occupies her home. Nowhere are Price’s graphic realism and poetic pacing more effective than when mother seeks daughter among the corpses at Henderson Field, Victoria’s suburban park serving as a mass morgue:
  Many of the coverings had been kicked aside and left in crumpled heaps and she walked with her eyes to the ground and she did not look at the dead. She did not see a naked woman with blond hair, heavy breasts flattened … Nor did she see a little boy with his bruised eyes open, his blue lips upturned in an eerie grin. Nor an old lady whose seamed face looked peaceful, unblemished, without a mark on her, as if she were only dreaming … Nor a boy with his legs crushed … Nor a man with a swollen belly … Nor another with his throat torn out … Nor a plump girl in pink pajamas … Nor two brothers … Nor a baby…
  Using the mundane to emphasize the horror, Price spares no details, and finally, as in Anatomy of Keys, attention is directed to us, the remote, voyeuristic audience—viewers as much captivated as repelled by what we see. While the poetry places us amid Houdini’s bloodthirsty audience, here we are like the purveyors, by turns, of Munch’s now-campy Scream and, for instance, any of Francis Bacon’s paintings meant to make us feel the fear they depict. Obliquely, Arthur’s painterly perspective makes sense; it is his curious penchant for seeing in 2-D that we share, as opposed to his former wife Callie’s capacity to see and embrace the world in 3‑D. Even in death she is a guiding spirit through the darkness, and, for Arthur anyway, a final reminder that there is meaning in materiality, even when life seems cheap.
  If this seems black and white, it is because it is. Despite some fabulous writing, Into That Darkness suffers from adhering so carefully to concept; hell is a slog, which may be fitting. But while Price’s poetic gifts are put to good use, the world he creates—for all its dark plausibility—misses the layered richness of that evoked in the Houdini poems, which explore similar themes of escape and rescue. Into That Darkness lacks the unified style and approach of Keys, although its message is the same: the idea that, as Sartre would say, although life continues there is no exit from death and decay. As Arthur and his cohorts observe, grief goes on.
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