An honest and unaffected collection of human experiences that deftly tackles themes of grief, loss, missed opportunities, and the pain of letting go.
The stories in Michael Melgaard’s poignant debut collection, Pallbearing, offer candid snapshots of life in a small town, where the struggle to make ends meet forces people into desperate choices. In “Little to Lose,” a son confronts his mother over the crushing prison of debt created by her gambling addiction. The aging divorcee in “Coming and Going” spends her days in paranoid pursuit of evidence with which to incriminate her neighbours in the derelict trailer park where she lives. And in “Stewart and Rose,” lifelong friends find love after their respective partners die — and then face loss all over again.
With deceptively spare prose that carries outsized emotional weight and pathos, Melgaard brings his characters to life in sharp-edged portraits and all-too-human dilemmas, creating engaging stories that resonate with honesty and depth, and linger in the imagination.
An honest and unaffected collection of human experiences that deftly tackles themes of grief, loss, missed opportunities, and the pain of letting go.
The stories in Michael Melgaard’s poignant debut collection, Pallbearing, offer candid snapshots of life in a small town, where the struggle to make ends meet forces people into desperate choices. In “Little to Lose,” a son confronts his mother over the crushing prison of debt created by her gambling addiction. The aging divorcee in “Coming and Going” spends her days in paranoid pursuit of evidence with which to incriminate her neighbours in the derelict trailer park where she lives. And in “Stewart and Rose,” lifelong friends find love after their respective partners die — and then face loss all over again.
With deceptively spare prose that carries outsized emotional weight and pathos, Melgaard brings his characters to life in sharp-edged portraits and all-too-human dilemmas, creating engaging stories that resonate with honesty and depth, and linger in the imagination.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Feb 4, 2020 |
| Specifications | 280 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | small town; debut collection; mortality; self-awareness; lives of men; masculinity; self-destructive; muscular prose; sense of loss; grief and loss; strained relationships; quotiden; everyday; short fiction; CanLit; Something for Everyone; Lisa Moore; The Largesse of the Sea Maiden; Denis Johnson; Zoolitude; Paige Cooper; Raymond Carver; Ken Haruf; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
MICHAEL MELGAARD is the author of the short story collection Pallbearing. His writing has appeared in Best Canadian Stories anthology, as well as Joyland, Lithub, and elsewhere. He is a former book columnist for the National Post. Originally from Vancouver Island, he currently lives in Toronto. |
| Written By |
|
MICHAEL MELGAARD is the author of the short story collection Pallbearing. His writing has appeared in Best Canadian Stories anthology, as well as Joyland, Lithub, and elsewhere. He is a former book columnist for the National Post. Originally from Vancouver Island, he currently lives in Toronto. |
“Melgaard’s quiet genius, like so many Canadian short-story writers before him, is in finding remarkable drama in the mundanities that make up an unremarkable life.” —Quill and Quire
“A rich and compelling collection, Pallbearing is a powerfully restrained debut showcasing the craftsmanship and deep emotional intelligence of its author.” —Open Book
“Michael Melgaard’s stories are deceptively still on their surfaces, but just below run cross-currents of the darkest human emotions: fear, rage, and love. Melgaard’s debut collection features characters in desperate situations, attempting to wrangle a drop of sense out of things while accepting or standing up to their fates. The stories in Pallbearing are crisp, ruefully funny, and unsentimental, each one a portrait on a grain of rice. A wonderful debut.” —Michael Redhill, Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of Bellevue Square
“These powerful, empathetic stories are about the burdens people carry and the debts they owe — at work and at home, to their friends and family, and sometimes, heaviest of all, to themselves. With remarkable compression and insight, Michael Melgaard cuts straight to the heart of people’s lives — in just a few pages I came to know these characters so well they felt like my own neighbours, and I’ll remember them for a long time. This is a striking debut by a writer to watch.” —Alix Ohlin, Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Dual Citizens
“With DNA traces of Raymond Carver and Kent Haruf, Michael Melgaard’s Pallbearing conjures up a wallop of small-town pathos and dead-end desperation that will leave you shattered. These stories may be deceptively spare in their construction, but they are rich and abundant in their impact.” —Michael Christie, Scotiabank Giller Prize–longlisted author of Greenwood