Danuta Gleed Literary Award finalist
City of Victoria Butler Book Prize finalist
Intensely imaginative and darkly emotional, the weird and wonderful stories in Double Dutch deftly alternate between fantasy and reality, transporting readers into strange worlds that are at once both familiar and uncanny — where animals are more human, and people more mysterious, than they first appear.
Shape-shifters, doppelgangers, and spirits inhabit the extraordinary worlds depicted in Trunkey’s stories: a single mother believes her toddler is the reincarnation of a terrorist; Ronald Reagan’s body double falls in love with the first lady; a man grieves for his wife after a bear takes over her body. The collection also includes moving tales grounded in painful and touching reality: a young deaf girl visits Niagara Falls before she goes blind; an elephant named Topsy is killed on Coney Island by Thomas Edison in 1903; and a woman learns the truth about her son’s disappearance while searching with her husband in the Canadian Rockies.
This enchanting and, at times, heartbreaking debut collection of stories hails the arrival of an exceptional new literary talent.
Danuta Gleed Literary Award finalist
City of Victoria Butler Book Prize finalist
Intensely imaginative and darkly emotional, the weird and wonderful stories in Double Dutch deftly alternate between fantasy and reality, transporting readers into strange worlds that are at once both familiar and uncanny — where animals are more human, and people more mysterious, than they first appear.
Shape-shifters, doppelgangers, and spirits inhabit the extraordinary worlds depicted in Trunkey’s stories: a single mother believes her toddler is the reincarnation of a terrorist; Ronald Reagan’s body double falls in love with the first lady; a man grieves for his wife after a bear takes over her body. The collection also includes moving tales grounded in painful and touching reality: a young deaf girl visits Niagara Falls before she goes blind; an elephant named Topsy is killed on Coney Island by Thomas Edison in 1903; and a woman learns the truth about her son’s disappearance while searching with her husband in the Canadian Rockies.
This enchanting and, at times, heartbreaking debut collection of stories hails the arrival of an exceptional new literary talent.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Mar 26, 2016 |
| Specifications | 280 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | short stories; thomas edison; alternating current; magical realism; fantastical; dying; ronald reagan; duality; urban; literary fiction; emotional; imagination; imaginative; doppelganger; Niagara Falls; duality; contemporary fiction; contemporary; reincarnation; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
LAURA TRUNKEY’S short fiction collection Double Dutch, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Butler Book Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and was selected as an Indies Introduce title by the American Booksellers Association. She lives in Victoria with her husband and son, where she is the Artistic Associate of the Victoria Festival of Authors. |
| Written By |
|
LAURA TRUNKEY’S short fiction collection Double Dutch, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Butler Book Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and was selected as an Indies Introduce title by the American Booksellers Association. She lives in Victoria with her husband and son, where she is the Artistic Associate of the Victoria Festival of Authors. |
Short-listed, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, 2016
“…a confident debut collection…” —Quill and Quire
“Beautifully bizarre … wickedly creative …these stories are strange and beautiful, imaginative and unafraid of emotion.” —W Dish Network
“…accomplished excursions into the weird and offbeat.” —Toronto Star
“Elegant, deft, light of touch, and sometimes spicily comic …[This] debut story collection is a marvel of style and substance.” —Vancouver Sun
“…clever and jaunty…” —Winnipeg Free Press
“…a suite of unexpected stories…Trunkey achieves a coherent marriage of elements in these tales: History, realism, and the mystical combine to strong and startling effect.” —Globe and Mail
Praise for Laura Trunkey and Double Dutch:
"…a confident debut collection…" — Quill and Quire
"Beautifully bizarre … wickedly creative …these stories are strange and beautiful, imaginative and unafraid of emotion." — W Dish Network
"…accomplished excursions into the weird and offbeat." — Toronto Star
"Elegant, deft, light of touch, and sometimes spicily comic …[This] debut story collection is a marvel of style and substance." — Vancouver Sun
"…clever and jaunty…" — Winnipeg Free Press
"…a suite of unexpected stories…Trunkey achieves a coherent marriage of elements in these tales: History, realism, and the mystical combine to strong and startling effect." — Globe and Mail
"Trunkey’s remarkable debut collection of stories, Double Dutch, circles life’s mysteries from unexpected vantage points in these plausibly fantastic stories. I can’t wait to see what she does next. If you enjoy Flannery O’Connor, Jennifer Egan (A Visit From the Goon Squad), Karen Russell (Swamplandia), or simply great writing that surprises and entertains, you will find something to love in these stories by a gifted young writer." — Indies Introduce Pick