Malagash

by Joey Comeau

Overview

A precisely crafted, darkly humorous portrait of a family in mourning

Sunday’s father is dying of cancer. They’ve come home to Malagash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia, so he can die where he grew up. Her mother and her brother are both devastated. But devastated isn’t good enough. Devastated doesn’t fix anything. Sunday has a plan.

She’s started recording everything her father says. His boring stories. His stupid jokes. Everything. She’s recording every single “I love you” right alongside every “Could we turn the heat up in here?” It’s all important.

Because Sunday is writing a computer virus. A computer virus that will live secretly on the hard drives of millions of people all over the world. A computer virus that will think her father’s thoughts and say her father’s words. She has thousands of lines of code to write. Cryptography to understand. Exploits to test. She doesn’t have time to be sad. Her father is going to live forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770414075
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	443,437
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Joey Comeau is the author of four novels and the webcomic A Softer World. His work has been nominated for the ReLit and Shirley Jackson awards, has appeared in the Best American Non-Required Reading and the Guardian , has been profiled in Rolling Stone , and has recently been translated into French, Spanish, Turkish, and German. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Editorial Reviews

Malagash is a poignant snapshot of the wonder, joy, sorrow, and reckless daring of being alive. With it, Joey Comeau cements his place among Canada's most talented and original writers. I loved this cleverly tender and unforgettable heartbreak of a book and I know you will too. A Monster Calls for a plugged-in age.” — Courtney Summers, author of This Is Not a Test and All the Rage

“Comeau's style is sparse but powerful. . . . Malagash is a darkly humored exploration of death, family, and grief, eloquent despite its short 183 pages, devastating despite its simplicity. Highly recommend.” — BumbleBookBee blog

“Known primarily for darkly comic novels and the webcomic A Softer World , Comeau effortlessly switches gears to expose the trauma, heartbreak, and humor in loss. . . an immensely touching tribute to a very human struggle with mortality.” — Publishers Weekly

“Comeau resists sentimentality, and, given his subject matter, that's no small feat . . .” — Publishers Weekly

“Graceful images, scenes and dialogue blossom, meaning Malagash rings with authentic emotion. . . Comeau gives readers a spare novel that feels real when it counts.” — Toronto Star

From the Publisher

10/15/2017
Canadian author Comeau, whose work ranges from the novel Lockpick Pornography to the webcomic A Softer World, here offers a spare, ice pick-sharp look at coping with death. With her mother and brother Simon ("the waif"), Sunday has come to tiny Malagash, Nova Scotia, because her father wants to die in his hometown. The rest of the family is broken up, but Sunday is a girl with a mission: she intends to record everything her father says in his last days, not to create audio files to remember him by but to write a computer virus that will spread throughout the world, allowing him to live on "like an echo in an empty room." It's an intriguing premise—we often think of enduring through empires or art, but here's a brave new techie approach—and Comeau makes it persuasive as Sunday bustles about, cool and determined and entirely likable. Recording everything from her father's meditative comments ("A weight will lift") to his silly jokes ("They better not have chickens in heaven. Chickens are idiot eagles and I hate them"), Sunday finally enlists Simon in her project, which meets with bittersweet success. VERDICT A fine fable for all smart readers.

Library Journal

2017-09-03
A young girl tries to cheat death with a computer virus.Sunday is writing a computer virus that will allow her dad to live forever. She records everything he says, then transcribes the recordings, then embeds the transcriptions in code that will spread from system to system—forever. In the meantime, Sunday's dad is dying of cancer. Every day, Sunday, her mom, and her younger brother go to the hospital to visit him. That's where Sunday makes her recordings. The virus is the most interesting thing here, but this is no Transcendence: nobody's consciousness gets uploaded to a hard drive. Instead, Sunday and her family grieve; Sunday and her brother grow closer; their mother recedes into her own sadness; and the virus gradually comes along. Comeau's (One Bloody Thing After Another, 2010) novel is short and spare, with chapters that rarely last more than a few pages. The writing is blunt, slightly truncated, in Sunday's narration. "I thought this was going to be easy," she tells us. "I would write down my father's words, and he would live forever. But the more I record, the more I realize I am missing." Comeau resists sentimentality, and, given his subject matter, that's no small feat—but, given that same subject matter, he can't be entirely successful. Unfortunately, the work has the slightly flattened aspect of a YA novel. Plus there's the inescapable fact that this subject matter is well-traversed: computers or no computers, parents die, and they'll go on dying. Despite sympathetic characters and a crisp narrative style, Comeau's latest seems to defy innovation.

Kirkus Reviews