Bøker av Annette Lapointe

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. YOU ARE NOT NEEDED NOW is a brilliant new collection of stories from Annette Lapointe, author of the Giller- nominated novel STOLEN. Often set within the small towns of the Canadian prairies, the stories in YOU ARE NOT NEEDED NOW dissect and examine the illusion of appearances, the myth of normalcy, and the allure of artifice. Lapointe presents characters who are extraordinarily real. They are often strange, vulgar, or messy: collecting blood-stained cotton pads and hairs from shower drains, slicing through skin to get more urgent medical treatment for testosterone withdrawal, storing the heart of a dead infant in a glass jar, kneeling on the dirty wet floors of a bathroom stall to perform oral sex. Despite the diversity, strangeness, and complexity of her characters, Lapointe illustrates a remarkable understanding of each one. She knows them so intimately, and gives her reader the gift of knowing them, too. Lapointe is adept at looking closely, and exposes her characters' faults and vulnerabilities, humiliations and vanities, in illuminating and surprising ways. Trapped in this inescapable place-life-her characters linger somewhere between apathy and obsession, compassion and disregard, conflict and avoidance. This is a bold collection of stories, rich with nuance, originality, and depth.

Finalist, ReLit Award Finalist, McNally Robinson Book of the Year (Manitoba Book Awards) Finalist, Bisexual Book Award (USA)Whitetail Shooting Gallery, a new novel from award-winning author and Giller Prize nominee, Annette Lapointe, is set in the outer urban, often desolate, landscape of the Saskatchewan prairie.Cousins Jennifer and Jason live close together as small kids, exploring their rural home. They live in adjacent, sometimes overlapping, households. But one act of family violence begets another, and the cousins drift apart. By adolescence, the two are estranged. Jennifer grows closer to her best friend, Donna, an evangelical minister?s daughter who rebels against her family by immersing herself in a world of vectors, fractals, perfect math, and porn.Jason?s world is hockey. Donna likes his street-hockey bruises. Jason?s also interested in Gordon, a semi-recluse ex-teacher who lives on the periphery of town and constructs art installations from leather, tamarack, animal skulls, and other found items.Horses, bears, kissing cousins, and other human animals conspire in a series of conflicts that result in accidental gunfire and scarring--both physical and emotional--that takes many years to heal.Praise for Whitetail Shooting Gallery:BC Books for BC Schools Pick?Imagine Alissa York?s Fauna but in rural Saskatchewan and with all the sentimentality stripped away. Imagine lots of sex, kissing cousins, a gunshot to the face, and a set of teeth that get kicked in over and over again. Imagine a family farmhouse, country roads, the kind of place you might want to move to raise your kids if you don?t look too closely. The hockey player, the pastor?s daughter, how he?s giving blow jobs to his teammates, and she?s having sex with her best friend. ? Whitetail Shooting Gallery baffled me thoughout, disturbed and troubled me, but it also intrigued me, continually surprised me, never stopped me wondering what would happen next. It?s an anti-pastoral, a complicated portrayal of rural life. ? Annette Lapointe?s literary reputation was established with Stolen, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2006. And here in her second book, she?s turning Can-Lit on its head, challenging not only her readers? sensibilities, but also ideas about what a novel should be. And the latter seems to be a requirement for the kind of book that I like best.? (Pickle Me This)?Wintry, notably offbeat, written with an elegant precision, and at times slyly funny ? Lapointe?s beautiful treatment of po?te maudit subject matter never fails to impress.? (The Vancouver Sun )?In Whitetail Shooting Gallery, Lapointe gives us an animalistic view of the teen world. This is not small-town rural life as idyllic or pastoral. Lapointe?s world reflects the turmoil, raging emotions and hormones brewing inside adolescents. ? the plot is almost secondary to Lapointe?s vivid, powerful voice and her beautifully savage view of rural prairie life.? (Winnipeg Free Press )Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2012 Pick, 49th Shelf

Finalist, Giller Prize Winner of 2 Saskatchewan Book Awards (Best First Book; City of Saskatoon Book Award)Finalist, Saskatchewan Book Award (Book of the Year)Winner, Canadian Authors' Association-BookTV Emerging Writer AwardFinalist, Amazon/ Books in Canada First Novel AwardRowan Friesen has made a career of drug-dealing and small-time thievery on the outer edges of Saskatoon. Shiftless and seemingly friendless, he is, at first glance, an unlikely protagonist. But as Stolen unfolds, we learn the details of Rowan's life: his well meaning but self-absorbed mother, his mentally ill father, and a high-school friendship both lustful and incendiary. This intriguing back-story runs alongside a current-day murder mystery, complete with road trips, arson, drink and drugs, tech nerds and the RCMP. Rowan Friesen may not be the world's most likable character, but the complexity and honesty of his story is thrilling. Stolen's lean, tight narrative tells a tale of theft, love, and madness on the Canadian prairie, and moves along like a half-ton pickup bouncing over dirt roads.Praise for Stolen:Globe and Mail Top 5 First FictionKate Sutherland's "e;Top Ten Books of 2006"e;"e;Lapointe constructs the familiar world, the one inside each of us, in the lives of strangers. It's what fiction does best."e; (The Globe and Mail)"e;It moves with the force of what's right and true and must not be elided."e; (Giller Prize Jury)"e;One of the many achievements of Stolen is that it offers readers of Canadian literature [a] depiction of a Saskatchewan in transition from a predominantly rural agrarian society to an urban one dominated by global capitalism This Saskatchewan might be fallen, but its residents persevere. Moreover, Stolen proposes that the province was never as pristine as it might have appeared. Lapointe's novel, in its innovative, contemporary depiction of the province, heralds a brave new age of prairie writing. For this it should be celebrated."e; (Canadian Literature)