“These
stories are wise, potent, and luminous. While casting a precise
and unflinching light on personal moments both large and small,
Simonds moves comfortably from clarity to mystery and back again
without a single false step. By turns joyful and melancholy,
this book is an event, a revelation of the fact that, for better
or worse, everything matters.”
—Diane Schoemperlen
“Merilyn Simonds is an accomplished alchemist . . . It
is the brilliance of her supple and sculptural prose —
both startling and lulling, elliptical and straightforward,
nuanced and bold — that elevates what she she has dreamed
of her life to the status of art.”
—National Post
“Beautifull wrought, emotionally complex, satisfying fiction.
Simonds may be the next Alice Munro.”
—Kirkus Reviews (U.S. starred review)
“The exactitude of description, the shocks of colour and
imagery and the rhythmic, sonorous prose are an intoxication,
a fierce and compelling joy . . . Here is a writer of powerful
talent . . .”
—Independent on Sunday (U.K.)
“This book achieves everything fiction can achieve, and
it does so with strength and sureness, eloquence and sweetness.
If Merilyn Simonds’s writing were a river, it would be
natural, wide and deep.”
—Montreal Gazette
“Vivid, wistful, beautifully shaped.”
—Elizabeth Hay
“Writing lapidary sentences, she has crafted stories so
solid they seem sculpted, yet so delicate they remain full of
mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly (U.S.)
“Spellbinding. . . The Lion in the Room Next Door
is a wonderfully evocative book, one reminiscent of the work
of Alice Munro, and one to be read and re-read with astonished
appreciation.
— London Free Press
“What is remarkable about these stories is the intensity
of feeling in the writing and its sheer quality. The observation
of the details of life are Chekhovian in their accuracy. . .”
—Publishing News
“Lush, gorgeous, and evocative . . . charged with precise
observation, generosity, acceptance and the magic that comes
of looking closely at the world in which we all dwell.”
—Douglas Glover
“Haunting . . . The stories are seductive, melancholy
and dark, sensual and sexual. Danger, assault, or loss is revealed,
sometimes unexpectedly, or lurking just around the corner, just
under the surface.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Simonds’ prose is taut and sound: she tells us
only what counts, those images and experiences that linger in
the heart and mind long after the actual event has passed.”
—Quill & Quire
“As ambiguous and hyper-real as an Alex Colville painting,
the stories are haunted by unseen presences and infused with
the feeling that something extraordinary could happen any moment.”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Merilyn
Simonds maintains an effortless balance between the dictates
of story and memory . . .these aren’t just the stories
of one life; here are the patterns found in all our lives,
richly celebrated.”
—Gail Anderson-Dargatz
“The Lion in the Room Next Door is a finely
wrought collection of stories. Travelling forward and back
through the life of one woman, each tale is complete unto
itself. Connected, they pose a riddle of where memory ends
and fiction begins and whether there is any difference between
the two.”
—The New Brunswick Reader
“Simonds approaches the classic (fiction) style of early
Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence — polished, well-observed
tales with a mysterious, bittersweet aftertaste. . . . The
Lion in the Room Next Door is an accomplished, at times,
exhilarating collection.”
—Eye Magazine
“Written with delicacy and grace, illuminating both
the nature of memory and the kind of work fiction can perform.
It is a great pleasure to read Merilyn Simonds.”
—Hilary Mantel
For further comment, see:
“Saints, paints and sinners,” by Kathy Shaidle,
Eye Magazine, April 15, 1999. www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.15.99/
arts/bg-fiction.html
“The Singer, Not the Song,” by Andrew Pyoer, The
Globe and Mail, August 7, 1999.
“Memoirs as Such,” by Allan Hepburn, Literary
Review of Canada, March, 2000.
Interviews
Interview
with Linda Richards, www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/simonds.html.
Interview with The Arts Today, CBC Radio. cbc.ca/insite/THE_ARTS_TODAY_TORONTO/1999/5/27.html
Interview with BookTV, January 2000. www.chumlimited.com/
mediaed/ guidepage_booktv.asp?studyID=48
Interview with David Bright, Ffwd Magazine, May 27,
1999. www.ffwdweekly.com/Issues/1999/0527/book1.html
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