ELIZABETH HAY

Garbo hardly ever laughed, and when she did, it was dubbed; reality is similarly transformed in this quirky, dreamy novel infused with movie mania. A plague of cinematic absorption settles over an Ottawa neighborhood in Hay''s latest offering (her debut, A Student of Weather, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize). Harriet Browning''s ascetic mother refused her the frivolity of the cinema as a child, and as an adult she views films obsessively. In middle age, she is the center of a small group of cinephiles: her son, Kenny, obsessed with Sinatra, watches classic movies to forget his troubles at school; her daughter, Jane, on the brink of adolescence, longs for the glamorous life; her neighbor and friend Dinah may be attracted mainly by the familial activity of watching together. Lew, Harriet''s realist husband, is left out of this loop; his escapes come in the form of business trips to South America. The arrival of Harriet''s aunt Leah, the trouble-making widow of a Hollywood screenwriter, and her stepson Jack, a lazy, fast-talking writer, leads to shifts in affections and allegiances. It is illness, however, that brings an end to the movie-watching, in true Hollywood weepy fashion. References to Pauline Kael (beloved by Harriet), top 100 movie lists and a lineup of movie greats (Marlon Brando, Sean Connery and Bette Davis are among the favorites) are as integral to the story as the interactions of its film-besotted protagonists. This is a gracefully written novel, mapping out the patterns of tension and release in a family whose members are best able to express their love and disappointment through the films of the past.

These twenty superbly crafted linked stories navigate the difficult realm of friendship, charting its beginnings and ends, its intimacies and betrayals, its joys and humiliations. A mother learns something of the nature of love from watching her young daughter as she falls in and out of favour with a neighbourhood girl. An intricate story of two women reveals a friendship held together by the steely bonds of passivity. A chance sighting in a library prompts a woman to recall the unconsummated courtship she was drawn into by a male colleague. With trenchant insight, uncommon honesty, and dark humour, Elizabeth Hay probes the precarious bonds that exist between friends. The result is an emotionally raw and provocative collection of stories that will resonate with readers long after the final page.

Winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers Trust Award for Non-fictionA poignant, complex and hugely resonant memoir about the shift from being a daughter to a guardian and caregiver, by a prizewinning author.From Elizabeth Hay, one of Canadas most celebrated novelists, comes a startling and beautiful memoir about the drama of her parents end, and the longer drama of being their daughter. Jean and Gordon Hay were a formidable pair. She was an artist and superlatively frugal; he was a proud and principled schoolteacher with an explosive temper. Elizabeth, the so-called difficult child, always suspected she would end up caring for them in their final years, in part to atone for her childhood sins.Philip Roth once said, "Old age is a massacre". All Things Consoled takes you inside the massacre as Hays ferociously independent parents become increasingly dependent on her.With remarkable wit and honesty, Hay lays bare the agony of a family coping as old age turns into the tragedy of living too long. In the end she arrives at a more nuanced understanding of her mother and father, and of herself as their daughter. They were and remain the two vivid giants in her life.

In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day. Connies niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connies past and her mothers broken childhood. In the process she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious, and unrelated, deaths of two young girls.

Starting with something as simple as a boy who wants a dog, His Whole Life takes us into a richly intimate world where everything that matters to him is at risk: family, nature, home.At the outset ten-year-old Jim and his Canadian mother and American father are on a journey from New York City to a lake in eastern Ontario during the last hot days of August. What unfolds is a completely enveloping story that spans a few pivotal years of his youth. Moving from city to country, summer to winter, wellbeing to illness, the novel charts the deepening bond between mother and son even as the family comes apart.Set in the mid-1990s, when Quebec is on the verge of leaving Canada, this captivating novel is an unconventional coming of age story as only Elizabeth Hay could tell it. It draws readers in with its warmth, wisdom, its vivid sense of place, its searching honesty, and nuanced portrait of the lives of one family and those closest to it. Hay explores the mystery of how members of a family can hurt each other so deeply, and remember those hurts in such detail, yet find openings that shock them with love and forgiveness. This is vintage Elizabeth Hay at the height of her powers.

A New Yorker best book of 2023Joyous and lyrical, Snow Road Station is an ode to the North, in fact an ode to life itself, and all its possibilitiesMary Lawson, bestselling author of A Town Called SolaceLike Elizabeth Strout with Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, Hay has created a fictional world to which she returns, to great effectLiterary Review, CanadaAn exquisitely etched coming-of-middle-age storyAnn-Marie Macdonald, bestselling author of Fayne________________________________________________________________A pitch-perfect story of love and female friendship from the Giller prize-winning author of Late Nights on Air.In the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, she beats a retreat to Snow Road Station - a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario.Lulu Blake, sexy and seemingly unfooled, is now in her sixties. Out of work, humiliated, she enters the last act of her life wondering what she can make of her diminished self. She believes she is through with theatre and drama - but drama is not through with her.At the centre of the novel is the relationship between Lulu and her lifelong friend Nan. As the two women contemplate growing older, they surrender certain hard-held dreams and confront the limits of the choices they have made.________________________________________________________________What readers LOVE about SNOW ROAD STATION...Beautifullywritten A very human story that tells us you dont have to be perfect and its okay to fail Snow Road Station is an utter delight! A breathtaking setting, unforgettable characters, and a compelling plot pushing the reader forward with her lovely prose Elizabeth Hay writes evocative books that delve deep into the human character, and Snow Road Station is no exception Beautifullywritten, interesting characters, strong themes. Drenched in Canadiana from the hard work of making maple syrup to snowy landscapes ... Elizabeth Hay reminds me to look, to see, to marvel at beauty that surrounds me

Tras ser despedido de su trabajo en la televisión, Harry Boyd regresa a sus raíces como gerente de una pequeña emisora de radio con poquísima audiencia. Allí, en el norte de Canadá, en los años setenta, la gente se enamora, charla de madrugada o vaga por la inmensidad de la naturaleza en un entorno llamado Yellowknife. Alli, Harry perdera la cabeza por una voz en antena y la mujer que se esconde detras de ella, Dido Paris, que por su parte se siente atraida por un joven tecnicoHarry y Dido pertenecen al grupo que trabaja en la estacion de radio. Las relaciones personales, sus afinidades y retosprofesionales, sus historias pasadas y su lucha diaria para seguir adelante crean el nexo comun de esta novela coral.Una autora que sabe como hallar la poesia en historias reales