Play the Monster Blind: Stories

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Doubleday Canada, 2000 - Fiction - 228 pages
An exhilarating collection of short fiction, Play the Monster Blind showcases the remarkably original voice of Lynn Coady, the award-winning author of Strange Heaven. Funny, poignant and smart, full of unforgettable characters, these stories explore the violence of family, the constraints of small-town life and the elusive promise of escape.

In "Ice Cream Man," an adolescent girl struggles to come to terms with her mother's death and her father's seeming indifference while conducting a secret affair with an older man from the local arena. Gerald, the young boy in "Big Dog Rage," goes to extreme and reckless measures to thwart the expectations of his parents, teachers, and the local priest, leaving his childhood friend to look longingly on. And in the title story, Bethany sees her gentle fiancé anew as she enters the raucous world of his hard-drinking family. Receiving a sharp shot to the mouth from her future sister-in-law Bethany finds her place in this clan secured.

With her incisive, resonant prose, Lynn Coady elicits laughter, sadness, and compassion. Play the Monster Blind is a keenly observed, imaginative collection from one of the most distinctive talents to arrive on Canada's literary scene in years.

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Contents

IceCream Man
27
Look and Pass On
81
Big Dog Rage
121
Copyright

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About the author (2000)

Lynn Coady was born in Cape Breton. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. She has edited an anthology of new writing from Canada's east coast called 'Victory Meat,' and a novel called 'Mean Boy' has been sold to Doubleday Canada. She writes for newspapers and magazines from time to time as well. Her title, Strange Heaven has won the Dartmouth Book Award in 1999, the Atlantic Bookseller's Choice Award in 1999, the Air Canada/Canadian Author's Association Award for Most Promising Writer Under Thirty in 1998, and was shortlisted for the Governer-General's Award for Fiction in 1998. Her title, Play the Monster Blind, won the Canadian Author's Association's Jubilee Award for a short fiction collection in 2001, was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 2000, was shortlisted again for the CNIB Award, and The Writer's Trust Award in 2001.

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