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WORK TITLE: Land Mammals and Sea Creatures
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1984?
WEBSITE:
CITY: Vancouver
STATE: BC
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1984; has a partner.
EDUCATION:University of British Columbia, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Oxford University Press China, writer and editor.
AVOCATIONS:Cycling, bowling, making stained glass.
AWARDS:Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, Writers’ Trust of Canada, 2012, for “The Elk-Headed Man.”
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories to publications, including Impressment Gang, Maisonneuve, and Little Fiction.
SIDELIGHTS
Jen Neale is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She holds a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia. Neale works for Oxford University Press China. She was named the winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s 2012 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, for “The Elk-Headed Man,” a short story.
In 2018, Neale published her first book, Land Mammals and Sea Creatures. Marty Bird and his daughter, Julie, are two of the protagonists of this novel. Marty has been dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder since he served in the Gulf War over two decades ago. It appears Marty’s mental health has been declining even further lately, and his neighbors have become concerned. They contact Julie, telling her that Marty may need her help. Julie has been living in Vancouver, but leaves to be with her father in the small town of Port Braid. Shortly after Julie arrives, an old acquaintance of Marty’s, Jennie Lee Lewis (who calls herself “JLL”), comes to town. The colorful JLL works as a performer impersonating Jerry Lee Lewis. She begins performing at Marty’s restaurant and living in his home. Julie is uncomfortable with JLL’s sudden involvement in her father’s life. Meanwhile, strange things begin happening in and around the town. Animals are dying off, and a whale washes ashore on the nearby coast.
A critic on the Opinionated Reader website remarked: “This is a dark read that had every potential to be memorable but fell short in the end. The writing couldn’t make the premise attractive. In my opinion, the writer lacked the kind of language that elevates sad, haunting stories into greatness. … It is not a bad book … but it had every potential to be exceptional and ended up being just average.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor described Land Mammals and Sea Creatures as “a mysterious and unsettling debut touching on grief, mourning, environmental calamity, and the healing potential of friendship.” Poornima Apte, reviewer in Booklist, noted that the volume featured “light touches of magical realism and vivid descriptions” and called it “a wholly original and stunning debut.” Writing in This Magazine, Whitney Rothwell suggested that the book was “insightful, gripping, and mysterious to the end.” Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, contributor to the Foreword Reviews website, described the novel as “dark and apocryphal.” Montgomery-Rodgers concluded: “As Julie, Marty, and the mysterious stranger traverse illuminating fictions and inexplicable animal suicides, Neale never lets you forget that humans are animals too.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Poornima Apte, review of Land Mammals and Sea Creatures, p. 51.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, May 3, 2012, article about author.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of Land Mammals and Sea Creatures.
This, May-June, 2018, Whitney Rothwell, review of Land Mammals and Sea Creatures, p. 42.
ONLINE
Canada C3, https://canadac3.ca/ (August 8, 2018), author profile.
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (March 1, 2018), Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, review of Land Mammals and Sea Creatures.
Jen Neale website, https://jenneale.ca/ (August 8, 2018).
Opinionated Reader, https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ (February 9, 2018), review of Land Mammals and Sea Creatures.
About
JN-0338Jen Neale is the author of the novel Land Mammals and Sea Creatures (ECW Press, 2018), and has short fiction published in magazines across Canada. In 2012, she was the winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers for her short story “The Elk-Headed Man”.
While attending the MFA program at the University of British Columbia, she was an Executive Editor at PRISM international. As a writer and editor for Oxford University Press (China), she produces educational material for the Hong Kong market.
Jen lives in Vancouver, BC, with her partner and her dog. She occasionally rides a bicycle, goes bowling and does stain glass.
Photo credit: Jackie Dives
Jen Neale
Journey Participant
Jen Neale is a writer living in Vancouver, B.C. Through a lens of magic realism, Jen’s stories often focus on wildlife and the environment. Her work has appeared in Maisonneuve, the Impressment Gang and Little Fiction. She was the winner of the 2012 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her first novel, Land Mammals and Sea Creatures, comes out with ECW Press in Spring 2018.
QUOTED: "a mysterious and unsettling debut touching on grief, mourning, environmental calamity, and the healing potential of friendship."
7/15/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Neale, Jen: LAND MAMMALS AND
SEA CREATURES
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Neale, Jen LAND MAMMALS AND SEA CREATURES ECW Press (Adult Fiction) $16.95 5, 8 ISBN:
978-1-77041-414-3
More than 25 years after serving in the Gulf War, Marty Bird still suffers from post-traumatic stress
disorder.
In fact, neighbors recently phoned Marty's daughter, Julie, in Vancouver to report that Marty seems to be
getting worse, bellowing in the middle of the night and disturbing people's sleep. Julie is perplexed, scared,
and upends her life to return to Port Braid, a coastal town in British Columbia, to assist her ailing dad. After
all, her mom is dead, and there are few friends able or willing to care for the elder Bird. Once home,
however, Julie discovers that Marty's decline is just one of a slew of issues tormenting local residents.
Shockingly, a whale has washed ashore, and other animals--bats, caribou, deer, eagles, fish, hares, mice,
raccoons, skunks--are dying in record numbers, drowning themselves or careening into walls or mountains.
On top of this, a stranger has come into Port Braid and is captivating everyone in her orbit. Calling herself
Jennie Lee Lewis, or JLL, she is a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonator. In short order, JLL has convinced Marty
to let her perform in the restaurant he owns and move into the bungalow he's lived in for decades even
though Julie is still staying there, too. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that JLL and Marty have a
shared history, but it is never clear why she tracked Marty down at this particular time or what she is hoping
to achieve from the reunion. And these are not the only befuddlements. The story also suggests that widescale
death is a necessary component of Earth's rebirth, a curious concept for characters without overt
religious convictions or a clearly articulated interest in spiritual matters.
A mysterious and unsettling debut touching on grief, mourning, environmental calamity, and the healing
potential of friendship.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Neale, Jen: LAND MAMMALS AND SEA CREATURES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650894/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=837588ae. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650894
QUOTED: "light touches of magical realism and vivid descriptions."
"a wholly original and stunning debut."
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Land Mammals and Sea Creatures
Poornima Apte
Booklist.
114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* Land Mammals and Sea Creatures. By Jen Neale; May 2018.296p. ECW, paper, $16.95
(9781770414143).
It's almost as if the animals in the Canadian seaside town of Port Braid are acting out Marty Bird's own
suicidal tendencies. A whale beaches itself, and suddenly, all manner of creatures start dying mysteriously.
Neale reminds us that such animal instincts are not unusual. Nor is Marty's severe PTSD, which haunts his
every waking moment, his stump for an arm a visual reminder of what he lost in Iraq. Marty's daughter,
Julie, has returned to town to tend to her scarred father, worried about losing the only parent she has left.
Then Jennie Lee Lewis, a woman Marty knows from the time he spent in New Mexico, appears and gives
Marty the one thing he is desperate for, permission to die. With light touches of magical realism and vivid
descriptions of the Canadian seaside, Neale's haunting tale reminds us that our lives are bound to others' in
ways both restricting and deeply comforting. Marty was too "preoccupied with keeping himself safe from
self-harm, to tend to the people left drowning in his wake," Neale writes. What does it say about Julie, then,
that she still wants to hold on to him? Is that selfishness or love? A wholly original and stunning debut.--
Poornima Apte
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Apte, Poornima. "Land Mammals and Sea Creatures." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2018, p. 51. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956861/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b97a2608.
Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956861
QUOTED: "insightful, gripping, and mysterious to the end."
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LAND MAMMALS AND SEA
CREATURES
Whitney Rothwell
This Magazine.
51.6 (May-June 2018): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Red Maple Foundation
http://www.thismagazine.ca/
Full Text:
LAND MAMMALS AND SEA CREATURES
By Jen Neale
ECW Press, $18.95
Despite the title of Jen Neale's debut magic realist novel, it's the Birds who dominate this story. Julie Bird
returns to her coastal B.C. hometown to prevent her father, Marty--struggling with PTSD--from his longdesired
self-destruction. When a stranger from Marty's past arrives the day a blue whale beaches on the
local shore, followed by a series of bizarre animal suicides, the town explodes in passion, turmoil, and the
stench of decaying whale carcass. Insightful, gripping, and mysterious to the end, Land Mammals and Seas
Creatures blows the reader to pieces, redefining life, death, love, and grief.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Rothwell, Whitney. "LAND MAMMALS AND SEA CREATURES." This Magazine, May-June 2018, p.
42. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541811273/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b56a36ba. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541811273
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Vancouver woman wins prize for
emerging writers
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
2012.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CQ-Roll Call, Inc.
http://www.rollcall.com/about/
Full Text:
Byline: CBC News
A 28-year-old emerging writer from Vancouver has won the $5,000 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for her
short-story Elk-Headed Man.
Jen Neale was named winner Wednesday at an event in Toronto by the Writers' Trust of Canada.
The prize recognizes writers under the age of 35 who are unpublished in book form. The award has a
reputation for tapping some of Canada's finest writers, including novelist Alyssa York, who presented the
prize.
"Elk-Headed Man has it all: pure imaginative power, sharp humour, emotional honesty and real insight," the
jury said in its citation.
"Throw in a hard-to-resist main character -- he's the strong silent type -- and add a few flourishes of raw
writerly style and you get a finely crafted story that re-plants the hot seed of Latin American magic realism
into the cold heart of the Canadian wilderness."
Elk-Headed Man includes characters from Neale's novel-in-progress. Neale is working toward an MFA in
creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and is the executive editor in charge of circulation
and promotion at PRISM international.
Two other finalists received $1000. They are:
- Dina Del Bucchia, of Vancouver for Under the 'I.''
- Kathy Friedman, of Toronto for At the Bottom of the Garden.
CBC News
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Vancouver woman wins prize for emerging writers." The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 3 May
2012. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A288535782/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5a2285ff. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A288535782
QUOTED: "dark and apocryphal."
"As Julie, Marty, and the mysterious stranger traverse illuminating fictions and inexplicable animal suicides, Neale never lets you forget that humans are animals too."
LAND MAMMALS AND SEA CREATURES
Jen Neale
ECW Press (May 8, 2018)
Softcover $16.95 (300pp)
978-1-77041-414-3
Julie Bird is distracted from a blonde stranger gesticulating from the shore when a whale appears, headed for the beach. Soon, it becomes clear that the big blue wants to beach itself, and Julie pictures “herself on her knees at the bottom, an air traffic—water traffic—controller, waving an orange flag.” But the whale succeeds, and Julie’s day on the water is ruined, even before a bald eagle and two ravens dive headfirst into the rocks nearby. In Jen Neale’s Land Mammals and Sea Creatures, this is where the past has come to die.
Julie moved back to Port Braid, Vancouver, to deal with her ailing father, Marty. He’s sick, but that’s nothing new. He’s been sick all her life—whether from grief at the loss of her mother or with PTSD from the Gulf War. But something’s different this time. He’s letting go of his habitual routines and stolid silence to host live music and tell Julie stories about his old dog, Midge. Julie suspects the rotting whale carcass, the stranger from the beach—anything to deflect from what Marty is headed toward.
Half shaman, half catalyst, the blonde stranger bridges the past and present, provoking Marty into telling stories about his past that reveal and obscure in equal measure. Though they’ve long been united by their relationship’s steady dysfunction, these revelations propel the Birds in different directions: while Julie struggles to accept her limits, Marty finally allows himself to connect to what he’s long tried to forget.
Land Mammals and Sea Creatures’s magical realism is dark and apocryphal. On this journey through the valley of the shadow of death, the only clear signal is distress. As Julie, Marty, and the mysterious stranger traverse illuminating fictions and inexplicable animal suicides, Neale never lets you forget that humans are animals too.
Reviewed by Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
QUOTED: "This is a dark read that had every potential to be memorable but fell short in the end. The writing couldn’t make the premise attractive. In my opinion, the writer lacked the kind of language that elevates sad, haunting stories into greatness. ... It is not a bad book ... but it had every potential to be exceptional and ended up being just average.
Title: Land Mammals and Sea Creatures
Writer: Jen Neale
Publishing House: ECW Press
Date of Publication:May 8th 2018
Rating: 3 stars
‘’The bones were gone. Only the outline of fur remined. Even the dislodged claws had been collected. Julie looked around as though the culprit might be right there.’’
The sea is like a dream. It’s said that life began there and our course on the Earth starts in the water. It’s only natural that this is a place where tales are born. Tales of the past and stories of our present times dedicated to the sea that gives life but also has the power to take it away. This novel blurs the lines between life and death, between the present and the past but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Julie returns to her hometown to support Marty, her father, who fought in the Gulf War and whose memories haunt his every step.When a strange woman arrives claiming to have a past that connects her to Marty, Julie begins to struggle with the truth and the secrets of her father. Meanwhile, death makes his presence known in the form of dead animals, believed to have committed suicide. So, this is a dark story that may sound weird- and it is- but the premise is very interesting.
Neale decides to tackle a number of themes in her work. From the deep bond between a man and a dog to the intense presence of the past in our daily lives and the slow but certain surrender to grief as a result of PTSD. It is a story that wants to appear heavy in symbolisms, to become a part of the tradition of Literary Fiction but, in my opinion, it just tries too hard. The themes of suicide and PTSD are closely linked but I am not sure whether the writer managed to insert them successfully into the plot.
The writing is too restrained, almost lukewarm, given the premise. The plot is engaging but the dialogue isn’t equally satisfying. I don’t think that the constant cursing can be considered ‘Literary’. Not when there are two F-bombs every other paragraph, not when we intentionally missing auxiliaries, subjects and pronouns. And no, this isn’t the teacher talking, it’s the truth. The plot deserved a more constructed, thoughtful, poetic language. On the bright side, there isn’t any hint of melodrama and cheap sensationalism in sight, which is always something I appreciate. Magical Realism is present but it feels forced, even misplaced. For example, the information regarding urban legends about animals were very interesting but they felt insignificant. An excuse for surreal snippets that offered little to the narration.
The characters gave me a bit of trouble, to be honest. I couldn’t bring myself to care for their fortune all that much. Marty is an interesting man and his struggles bring the novel a whole level up. Julie is also sympathetic and I liked her straightforward manner, although her development over the course of the action was subpar. However, this JLL creature is such a despicable, foul-mouthed, disgusting figure that completely and utterly destroyed the story for me. Call me overreacting but low quality situations and, most importantly, low quality people is something I cannot stand.
This is a dark read that had every potential to be memorable but fell short in the end. The writing couldn’t make the premise attractive. In my opinion, the writer lacked the kind of language that elevates sad, haunting stories into greatness. I recommend the novel, though. I tend to overanalyze certain things and you may find significance where I couldn’t. It is not a bad book per se but it had every potential to be exceptional and ended up being just average.
Many thanks to ECW Press and Edelweiss for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.