Echolocation
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- May 2019
- Subjects
- Short Stories (single author), Contemporary Women, Literary
- Categories
- Author lives in British Columbia
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eBook
- ISBN
- 9781988732572
- Publish Date
- May 2019
- List Price
- $11.99
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Description
Winner of Best Cover Design at the 2020 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
Third Place in the Prose Category at the 2019 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada!
All Lit Up Book Club Selection!
In this provocative collection of short stories, Karen Hofmann creates characters who struggle to connect or disconnect from entanglements and relationships. With ironic accuracy and sensuous imagery, Hofmann considers a range of human foibles: a newlywed couple who transform into feral beasts during the hardships of a remote research expedition; backbiting faculty members who strip down during a post-conference BBQ; an heretical nun who explores the possibility of a new life by imaginatively excavating the fossils of BC's Burgess Shale; and an ambitious bylaw officer determined to make her mark on the city's streets.
In Echolocation, Karen Hofmann has found new ways to sound the depths of the human heart.
About the author
Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley and taught creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, for many years. She now divides her time between Vancouver Island and the BC Interior. A first collection of poetry, Water Strider, was published by Frontenac House in 2008 and shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. Her first novel, After Alice, was published by NeWest Press in 2014, and a second novel, What is Going to Happen Next, in 2017. Her short fiction has won the Okanagan Fiction Contest three times, and "The Burgess Shale" was shortlisted at the 2012 CBC Short Fiction Contest. Karen Hofmann is an avid walker, and her writing explores the landscapes, both rural and urban, of British Columbia as well as the personalities and social dynamics of the inhabitants. Her latest novel, A Brief View from the Coastal Suite, was released in spring 2021.
www.karenhofmann.com
Awards
- Winner, Best Cover Design at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards
- Commended, Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada - prose category
Excerpt: Echolocation (by (author) Karen Hofmann)
From “The Burgess Shale”
And she has come to the mountains. She has not driven through these passes before. The sight of the slopes and peaks affects her: She is appalled. They are rough, rude, in extremis. Naked rock, they jut and thrust.
When she falls asleep, she dreams that she is driving a pass. She dreams that she must feel along the edge of the highway with her hand while she drives, to make sure that she does not go off the edge, down the side of the mountain.
In the morning, her car will not start. She finds a tow truck, a garage, goes exploring on foot.
It is autumn; the aspens of Banff have turned golden. She walks around the downtown, stopping at a wine store, a soap store that censers patchouli and lemongrass into the mountain air for a full block in every direction. She stops at a rock and mineral store selling fossils. She is tempted by a display case of iridescent ammolites. Fossilized nacre: the colours, red, gold, violet, peacock shimmy across the gems’ surfaces. But what would she do with them? She does not want to accumulate possessions, weight.
She sorts through all of the buckets in the rock store: She has infinite time on her hands. Fossils from the time before these mountains, for sale.
She walks along the Bow, admiring the brilliant and varied colours of the natural shrubbery. She admires the tumbling waterfall. She crosses a bridge and walks through an old cemetery, where elk are grazing unafraid. She sleeps well, after a dinner of pasta, in her hotel room.
The whorled shells, the world. Time all curled up in its shale strata: the day with its night curving back in reflection; the year with its seasons of burgeoning and decline. The river, the mountains, where once was equatorial sea. We do not visit the same river twice. We do not stand still.
Editorial Reviews
"… lived up to our high expectations."
~ Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf
"Dark stories weave together beauty and cruelty."
~ Rory Runnells, Winnipeg Free Press
"[In 'Virtue Prudence Courage,'] Hofmann’s adjustment of narrative perspective is so masterfully subtle that I had to go back to see when and how exactly this ordinary love story became a weird horror story."
~ Stephanie L. Lu, Canadian Literature
"Echolocation is a magical and surreal examination of humanity at the edges of experience."
~ Kristian Wilson, Bustle