reading from
Losing It
Monday, 4 November, 7 pm
Faculty Staff Lounge
Ward Chipman Library Building
Described by Alistair MacLeod as "one of the best young writers in the country," Alan Cumyn is the author of five novels, including the prize-winning pair Man of Bone (1998) and Burridge Unbound (2000), based, in part, upon the experience Cumyn gained in his eight years on the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and in his years as a teacher in China and Indonesia. These novels narrate a Canadian diplomat’s harrowing experience when he is kidnapped on a Pacific island and the post-traumatic breakdown that follows upon his release. Man of Bone won the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. Burridge Unbound was a Giller Prize finalist and winner of the Ottawa Book Award. In Losing It, Cumyn turns from international and political terrorism to a domestic comedy of errors.
Cumyn’s
dark comedy, Losing It, is about a family that – in the
space of one short week – "falls in upon itself." The
catalyst for the collapse is Bob Sterling, professor of American literature,
an Edgar Allan Poe specialist. In Cumyn’s "House of Usher,"
a house, and every dependable commonplace, comes to ruin. Private vulnerabilities
(and sexual proclivities) are made public. Alternating the voices of different
characters, Cumyn takes us inside the comedic and certain chaos that is
each character’s inner world. Julia, Bob’s wife, attempts
to manage an insomniac two-year old, a wandering demented mother, and
a wayward husband. Because of her dementia, Lenore’s stream of talk
and thought is rife with malapropisms. Bob’s obsessive calculations,
in order to keep his sexual life a secret, result in comic ineptness in
the classroom and at a conference. If it weren’t so horrible, it
would be funny. If it weren’t so funny, you’d guess any life
could go this awry. Losing It is a darkly delicious satire on
the academy, a portrait of the wreck and resilience of one family.
"An exhilarating roller-coaster ride that will have readers shrieking with delighted laughter and appreciation.... Losing It is ultimately a brilliant tour de force that pushes past the boundaries of expectation and predictability."
– The Globe & Mail"Cumyn is a gifted writer who has demonstrated command of a wide breadth of theme. He’s certainly deft at creating tautly entertaining and viscerally convincing portrayals of men and women twisted to the snapping point by their unwillingness to accept themselves as they are."
– The National Post