2000 short list:
Sanctuary & Other Stories
by Jennifer Duncan
published by DC Books
In Jennifer Duncan's Sanctuary & Other Stories, a tribe of 'cool' and not so 'cool' youths inhabit the Toronto punk scene of the 1980s. Overdressed when not underdressed, unsure whether the picturesque squalor they live in is forced upon them or elected, they slang, praise, love, leave, and take themselves much too seriously or not seriously enough. Extraordinarily well written, full of passionate and razor-sharp detail, these fourteen stories bring hilarity and grace to a subculture too often presented in the media as one-dimensional and antisocial. Jennifer Duncan's Sanctuary & Other Stories is a 'smart' in all senses of the word!
Jennifer Duncan
Jennifer Duncan earned her BA in English and Creative Writing at York University and won the President's Prize for Prose. She earned her MA in English and Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal where Sanctuary & Other Stories won the David McKeen Award for best creative writing thesis. Her poetry and prose have been published in Matrix, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and Blood & Aphorisms, who included her in their first anthology. She contributes book reviews to NOW Magazine, Quill & Quire, Books In Canada and The National Post. She has taught writing at The City School, The Avenue Road School of the Arts, George Brown College and Concordia University.
Book excerpt
It was an old early Seventies bottle of 7Up that started it. There the bottle was, lying in the gutter, oblivious to the tires swerving dangerously close. He was about to sweep it into his bag when the first ray of spring glinted off it as green as a puddle of moss back home in Muskoka. He bent down and picked it up, this gift from the gutter of Toronto. The red and white lettering on the green glass reminded him of Christmas. He noticed a line of plain white capital letters ringing the bottom. He sat down and squinted at it, resting his broom on his shoulder. It said: YOU LIKE IT, IT LIKES YOU! He repeated this out loud three times, dusting off the glass. He put the bottle in his pocket and took it back to the rooming house after work...
Luke did not have a life. He had a fog of muted colours and muffled sounds, and this fog stood between him and the life that belonged to him... However, this bottle, with its red and green and white and its enigmatic message, somehow had entered his room without losing its colour. He didn't know how to fit it into his description. He couldn't figure the slogan out at all. Was the 7Up saying that you like it therefore it will like you back, a proposal of conditional affection that was as if the bottle was wither desperate for approval or simply undiscriminating in its tastes? Or was it that you like it because it likes you , playing on your own self-interested motive for appreciation? But how could pop and/or (what does 'It; actually refer to?) it container demonstrate its affection for you? By tasting good? Edibility as evidence of approval? If it didn't like you, would it taste bad? How did this message fulfill the requirement of the psychology of selling, the demands of seduction and desire? If you thoughtlessly accepted the words without attempting a logical connection between them - 'it', 'you', 'like' - would you then somehow feel a vague but positive relationship with the product and so purchase it? In the end, attempting to formulate a logical construction was disrupted by the mysteriousness of a comma, rather then a conjunction, connection the two thoughts. This comma was determined to render the seemingly bald statement a riddle, a kind of zen koan. He decided to take the bottle to the Beverly Tavern and show it to his friend Deirdre.
Published with permission from the author. This excerpt is copyright protected.
