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Love Object [Paperback]

Sally Cooper

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Book Description

Jun 1 2002

It's no secret that Sylvia is a little crazy. People have thought so ever since she first came to town when she was a teenager. But outside her own family, no one knows the depth of her mental illness. For her daughter, Mercy, Sylvia's illness is at once a source of agony and fascination.

Mercy's mother is absent from her life on several occasions. First, she is taken away to a mental hospital for treatment. Later, on a summer night in the early 1980s, Sylvia disappears entirely, never to be seen again. Her absence is pivotal in Mercy's life.

Populated by an array of compelling characters the mad mother, the lovelorn father, the crossdressing younger brother, the quirky grandmother Love Object is a gripping account of the coming-of-age of a teenage girl in rural Ontario in the 1980s.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 300 pages
  • Publisher: Dundurn (Jun 1 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 155002387X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1550023879
  • Product Dimensions: 14 x 2.4 x 21.5 cm
  • Shipping Weight: 440 g
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #722,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

From Amazon

Love Object, Sally Cooper's first novel, begins like many others in small-town Ontario. In this constricted universe, life is often both depressing and unedifying. Seldom is humour involved. However, Cooper's book is a welcome exception. Apple Ford is a town with only four streets and distinct lack of night life, but as in a David Lynch movie, there is more to this small town than meets the eye. Sylvia, the crazy mother of Mercy, the young narrator, is the love object of the title. When Sylvia disappears, Mercy transfers her mother's seductive appeal into an obsession with her own body, while her brother takes on his absent parent's gender identity.

Although there are some dark moments, Cooper realizes that growing up in the country is just too absurd to take absolutely seriously and this results in some deliciously surreal moments and characters. Take Mercy's perpetually horny grandma, Vi, who fantasizes about her ex-boss at the local diner: "Dan's pubes were on my mind as he was giving me the 'you're fired' speech.... I pictured the hair taking territory, shooting tendrils up his abdomen, sliding down around the curve of his thighs. Even as he talked about how my surgery stories were losing him customers, my mind was running my fingers through that luxuriant pile." Although Love Object is still a recognizable coming-of-age story, it is closer to Tony Burgess's gothic evocations in Pontypool Changes Everything than to Alice Munro's classic tales. Sally Cooper's surprising, if off-balance, debut is not to be missed. --Robyn Gillam

Review

"Here is a first novel of great sensitivity...readers will be haunted by its pain and power." (David Greene The Leader Post 20021012)

"(Sally Cooper's) skill is evident in her first novel, beginnning with its title, Love Object, the opening key to the story's final cathartic punch." (Globe and Mail 20020803)

"...a powerful debut for Sally Cooper. She clearly is a fearless writer, not afraid to make us squirm as she lays out stark details that expose and enrich her characters." (Ottawa Citizen 20020721)

"beautifully, sometimes brilliantly rendered." (Quill and Quire 20020701)

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