Winner
More
Austin Clarke
(published by Thomas Allen Publishers)
View Austin Clarke's video
What the judges said:
"Don't call us visible minorities. I am not any damn minority. Visible or invisible," Idora tells her white friend as they cruise Kensington Market in search of Caribbean food. Austin Clarke's More paints a vivid and powerful portrait of a black woman's four-day journey as she relives her life in Canada as an immigrant from the West Indies. Her enduring sorrow balanced by hard work, and short bouts of gaiety and joy ensure her presence as a memorable and powerful figure in Canadian literature."
More is an extraordinary story about oppression, redemption and hope. After Idora Morrison's deadbeat husband abandons her, she does her best to survive against difficult odds. At the news of her son's involvement in gang crime, Idora retreats into a vortex of memory, pain and disappointment that unravels as a riveting dissection of her life as a black immigrant to Toronto.
Austin Clarke
(photo by Steven Carty)
Austin Clarke's work includes six short story collections, three memoirs and eleven novels, including The Polished Hoe, which won the 2002 Giller Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 2003 Trillium Award. Clarke has been named to the Order of Canada and has received four honourary doctorates. He lives in Toronto.
Excerpt from More
She must turn left when she reaches the corner, and passes by Eaton's department store, so "Goodbye, Mr. Eaton!", where on Thursdays, her day off from being a domestic servant, years ago, she had spent her "off-duty" excursions, touching dresses and underwear and fur coats, and imagining they were on her body, and wishing that the small brown envelopes that contained her fortnightly wages held more cash in them; and were bigger; and her closeness to this store was like a magic lantern cutting to another scene: putting on three dresses to try them out for size and fit, and imagining not taking them off, and imagining walking out from the changing room, from the store. "Goodbye, Mr. Eaton!" she says to the store. The store is closed. "Bye-bye!"
...And now she passes Massey Hall, and she thinks about all those concerts advertised on its billboard, and in the Star newspaper, which she never went to, because of the price of admission, during those same domestic servant days; but she could hear some of the songs and tunes played by the artists, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Miles Davis and others, on WBLK radio; and not have to go to the concerts themselves. Not in those days...
"Blang! blang! buh-lang! blang!..."
She can hear the bells of the church where the men with no homes, with no jobs, with no bedrooms, with no breakfasts, sit in the cold sun and wait for the distribution of homemade coffee and Starbucks doughnuts. Across from the church, as if to fill the soul with the symbol of God and Catholics, is the St. Michael's Cathedral. "Blang! blang! buh-lang! blang!..."
"Bells calling worshippers to prayers!" she says. "Could be to Sunday School..."
She cannot get the tune the bells are playing. Perhaps these bells are not like the ones that ring from the steeple of St. James's Cathedral Church. Perhaps bells do not play tunes, or hymns, or psalms. This is not rock-and-roll. This is not rhythm and blues. But they make her soul light. And they bring back the joy of deliverance. And they seem to justify her affection for this city of Toronto, and for this country of Canada; and for this community of Moss Park.
Read the Committee's comments on the other shortlisted books.
2009 shortlist:
