The Silence on the Shore

Front Cover
Dundurn, Feb 14, 2011 - Fiction - 488 pages

Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be Hugh Garner’s best, most ambitious novel. Truly, in the person of Grace Hill, the landlady of the Toronto rooming house where most of the book’s events take place, Garner has created a fictional character never to be forgotten. Grace is a middle-aged snoop and an overweight nudist whose sexual release comes from watching wrestling matches at a hockey arena that is a thinly disguised Maple Leaf Gardens.

Around Grace orbit her various boarders: alcoholic Gordon Lightfoot; Walter Fowler, an aspiring writer whose marriage has just broken up; Aline Garfield, a fundamentalist Christian grappling with various urges and torments; a Polish refugee woman; and a colourful cast of others whose lives intersect in drama that arises from arbitrary or coincidental encounters.

According to scholar John Moss, the book is “the best realistic novel of Canadian city life yet to be written.”

 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
5
CHAPTER ONE
25
CHAPTER TWO
39
CHAPTER THREE
51
CHAPTER FIVE
74
CHAPTER SIX
87
CHAPTER SEVEN
97
CHAPTER EIGHT
102
CHAPTER TWENTY
218
CHAPTER TWENTYONE
228
CHAPTER TWENTYTWO
241
CHAPTER TWENTYTHREE
253
CHAPTER TWENTYFOUR
266
CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE
270
CHAPTER TWENTYSIX
274
CHAPTER TWENTYSEVEN
285

CHAPTER NINE
106
CHAPTER TEN
118
CHAPTER ELEVEN
126
CHAPTER TWELVE
131
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
139
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
152
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
160
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
175
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
190
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
198
CHAPTER NINETEEN
211
CHAPTER TWENTYNINE
308
CHAPTER THIRTY
322
CHAPTER THIRTYONE
338
CHAPTER THIRTYTWO
347
CHAPTER THIRTYTHREE
373
CHAPTER THIRTYFOUR
382
CHAPTER THIRTYFIVE
403
CHAPTER THIRTYSIX
418
CHAPTER THIRTYSEVEN
438
CHAPTER THIRTYEIGHT
447
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About the author (2011)

Hugh Garner (1913–1979) immigrated to Canada in 1919, settling in Toronto. His most famous novel is Cabbagetown, released in its entirety in 1968. In 1963 he won the Governor General’s Award for Hugh Garner’s Best Stories.

George Fetherling is a poet, fiction writer, and voyager. Among his many books are Travels by Night: A Memoir of the Sixties and Running Away to Sea: Round the World on a Tramp Freighter. He lives in Vancouver.

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