The brilliant debut novel by Helen Weinzweig, one of the first feminist writers in Canada and the award-winning author of Basic Black With Pearls.
In Helen Weinzweig’s brilliant debut novel, a wedding reception becomes a gothic dream. The bride is not all she seems and there is something ambiguous about the groom — and just about everyone else at the surreal and strangely moving wedding.
Like a piece of music, Passing Ceremony is composed of brief, suggestive fragments that grow into a tightly integrated whole. There are bits of real and imagined conversation; polite dialogues that slide into mad comic banality; and scenes that could be quiet nightmares out of Borges. A satire and a rueful meditation on the ways people hurt one another, Weinzweig gives us a world suspended in time, an uneasy territory of the soul, which we all inhabit.
This edition features a new introduction by Jim Polk.
The brilliant debut novel by Helen Weinzweig, one of the first feminist writers in Canada and the award-winning author of Basic Black With Pearls.
In Helen Weinzweig’s brilliant debut novel, a wedding reception becomes a gothic dream. The bride is not all she seems and there is something ambiguous about the groom — and just about everyone else at the surreal and strangely moving wedding.
Like a piece of music, Passing Ceremony is composed of brief, suggestive fragments that grow into a tightly integrated whole. There are bits of real and imagined conversation; polite dialogues that slide into mad comic banality; and scenes that could be quiet nightmares out of Borges. A satire and a rueful meditation on the ways people hurt one another, Weinzweig gives us a world suspended in time, an uneasy territory of the soul, which we all inhabit.
This edition features a new introduction by Jim Polk.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Aug 26, 2017 |
| Specifications | 128 pages | 5.5 in x 8.5 in |
| Keywords | feminist literature; marriage; wedding; runaway bride; basic black with pearls; short books; canadian classic; a view from the roof; virgin suicides; margaret atwood; dennis lee; david godfrey; alice munro; canlit; women writers; women's literature; women's studies; bear marian engel; little girl who was too fond of matches; collectors edition; educational; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
HELEN WEINZWEIG is the author of the novels Passing Ceremony and Basic Black with Pearls, winner of the Toronto Book Award. Her short story collection, A View from the Roof, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Helen Weinzweig died in Toronto in 2010. |
| Written By |
|
HELEN WEINZWEIG is the author of the novels Passing Ceremony and Basic Black with Pearls, winner of the Toronto Book Award. Her short story collection, A View from the Roof, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Helen Weinzweig died in Toronto in 2010. |
“A remarkable piece of writing.” —Toronto Star
“Polished, forceful, and poetic.” —Ottawa Citizen
“Handled with skill.” —Chatelaine
“A brilliant first work of fiction.” —Edmonton Journal
“[Passing Ceremony] crackles with the energy of chance. Its form seems built from mysterious, unconscious forces . . . As a whole, the powerful novel resembles a shattered reflection in a mirror, each page a different-sized shard of a splintered psyche . . . There’s a reason people are returning to [Helen Weinzweig’s] work now. Her art was committed to unshackling us from the illusion of any form of certainty — to keeping the unknown, unknown.” —Literary Review of Canada