Cover illustration and design by Malcolm Sutton
Winner the 2024 City of Victoria Bulter Book Prize
Finalist for the 2024 VMI Besty Warland Between Genres Award Finalist for the 2024 Fred Kerner Award Finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award Finalist for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award Anecdotes
Book*hug Press, 2023 Literary Fiction / Short Stories Publication Date: September 19, 2023 280 pages Paperback ISBN 9781771668446 |
With dreamlike stories and dark humour, Anecdotes is a hybrid collection in four parts examining the pressing realities of sexual violence, abuse, and environmental collapse.
Absurdist flash fictions in “The Boy is Dead” depict characters such as a park that hates hippies, squirrels, and unhappy parents; a woman lamenting a stolen laptop the day the world ends; and birds slamming into glass buildings. “We’re Not Here to Talk About Aliens” gathers autofictions that follow a young protagonist from childhood to early 20s, through the murky undercurrent of potential violence amidst sexual awakening; from first periods to flashers; sticker books to maxi pad art; acid trips to blackouts; creepy professors to close calls. “This Isn’t a Conversation” shares one-liners from overheard conversations, found texts, diary entries and random thoughts: many are responses to the absurdity and pain of the current political and environmental climate. In “The Dream House,” The Past and The Future are personified as various incarnations in relationships to one another (lovers, a parent and child, siblings, friends), all engaged in ongoing conflict. These varied, immersive works bristle with truth in the face of unprecedented change. They are playful forms for serious times. |
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Advanced praise
"Anecdotes is so wry and funny. The stories are wicked little things. So hopeless in content, yet the humour is a kind of tonal hope.".
—Michael V. Smith, author of Queers Like Me
"Part coming of age and part end times, Anecdotes is a bold and brilliant mixture of dark humour, understated literary experiments, and a poet's eye for the truth. Mockler’s writing isn't afraid to look at the world and see it for what it is. Her stories are so deeply immersive you’ll never want to leave. An absolute must-read if you live on this planet and even if you don’t."
—Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman, Mudlarkers, and Bad Endings
Utterly original, bracingly acidic, and always vulnerable, Kathryn Mockler channels Donald Barthelme having a psychotic break in this magnificent collection of coming-of-age stories for late stage capitalism.
—Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes and Sleeping With Friends
“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?” Terrible things do happen. Daily. From the opening story of a dead boy nobody loved, to anxiety-ridden days of overcrowded public buses and murderous job interviews, to birds dropping from the sky, to no one needing money anymore (or a stolen laptop) because the world is ending today and everyone still thinks it’s happening to someone else while it’s happening to them. Is it too late? Of course it is! “What do they need?” Don’t ask Pastor Rick. Like you, dear reader. “They need to hold on real tight.”
MOCKLER’S ANECDOTES IS AN INSTANT ‘POST HOPE’ CLASSIC!
—Kirby, author of Poetry is Queer
where to get anecdotesYou can order directly from Book*hug Press or consider supporting your favourite independent bookstore.
Here are some of my favourite bookstores: Another Story Bookshop (Toronto) Flying Books (Toronto) Glass Bookshop (Edmonton) Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (Montreal) Librairie Saint Henri (Montreal) Librarie l’Euguélionne (Montreal) Massey Books (Vancouver) Munro's Books (Victoria) Novel Idea Bookstore (Kingston) Type Books (Toronto) Or your local library! |
from the book*hug blog
 Behind the Story: Kathryn Mockler on "I Won't Clean the Tub"
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