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Family and place are the hinges on which the stories of Lynn Coady's deservedly lauded
Play the Monster Blind swing. And they do swing. The book is a sure-footed dance to the often painful music of the working class of the Canadian East Coast, a tough but graceful negotiation of the living rooms, bars, workplaces, and childhood haunts where violence and tenderness, hilarity and despair, belonging and alienation coincide.
The book's central image--a monstrous, confused loneliness--appears in the title story, which sees a young woman thrown into a manic-depressive driving tour of the Cabot Trail with her fiancé's chaotic, hard-drinking family. As Bethany sees her future father-in-law approach, weaving, arms outstretched, drunkenly repeating interminable stories of his youth, she can think only of Frankenstein's "Boris Karloff, clomping around confused and horrified." The banal grotesquerie of loneliness surfaces again and again in the stories. In "A Great Man's Passing," Bess describes her parents' house, where she lives with her young son, as "a funeral home, with two corpses propped up in front of the TV set." But despite the ache at their core, Coady's stories are often hilarious, their muscular manipulation of language and keen sense of absurdity reminiscent of Denis Johnson and Lorrie Moore. Coady grew up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and its hyperbolic, wildly metaphorical, and exuberantly profane regional dialect fires these stories with a wicked joy. Coady was nominated for a Governor General's Award for her debut novel, Strange Heaven, and Play the Monster Blind, chosen as one of the best books of 2000 by The Globe and Mail, is a striking and thoroughly satisfying follow-up. --Karen Solie
Review
"Part of the delight and marvel of Coady's stories is their crazy energy: even though
Play the Monster Blind is her debut collection, Coady swerves with a hardy veteran's knowing — her work is among the most noteworthy in the country." —
National Post"Stories told with uncommon dexterity and wisdom. Coady has a lively talent, writing with curiosity and warmth about the heartrending tangles of human connection." —
The Globe and Mail"Coady entertains, dazzles, instructs. Her stories manage to do what stories—do best: get at that bright kernel of things and vibrate in the imagination like light-shot gems." —
The Toronto Star"A stunning collection for the strong at heart, a more-than-worthy follow-up to her Governor-General's Award-nominated debut,
Strange Heaven." —
Vancouver Sun
