The Bone Mother

by David Demchuk

Overview

LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2017 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE!

“Demchuk gracefully pieces together a dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose. These stories read like beautiful and brutal nightmares, sharply disquieting, and are made all the more terrifying by the history in which they’re grounded.”

— Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies.

Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers—and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall—will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.

David Demchuk has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio, and other media for more than thirty years. His reviews, essays, interviews and columns have appeared in such magazines as Toronto Life, Xtra, What! Magazine , and the Toronto Star . The Bone Mother is his first novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771484213
Publisher:	ChiZine Publications
Publication date:	07/18/2017
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	164,400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Demchuk: David Demchuk was born and raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. He has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio and other media for more than thirty years. His publications include the short-fiction cycle Seven Dreams and the Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Cyberspace, and appearances in the anthologies Making, Out!, Outspoken and Canadian Brash. His reviews, essays, interviews and columns have appeared in such magazines as Toronto Life, Xtra, What! Magazine and Prairie Fire, as well as the Toronto Star. Most recently he has been a contributing writer for the digital magazine Torontoist. The Bone Mother is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/27/2017
This extraordinary debut novel crosses borders and boundaries, stretching across continents and years in a series of interwoven stories and vignettes. Somewhere in Ukraine, near the Romanian border, there were once three villages. There was a factory that made porcelain the color of bleached bone, a river where drowned women beckoned inattentive passersby, a road where a lonely girl walked and walked, and a church where monsters were kept under an altar. When war comes to the villages, its inhabitants scatter—not just the men, women, and children, but the drevniye, strigoi, and malen’kiy sprut, all the beautiful and terrible creatures of the old world. And chasing after all these “children of monsters and of gods” are the Nichni Politsiyi, the Night Police. Demchuk gracefully pieces together a dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose. These stories read like beautiful and brutal nightmares, sharply disquieting, and are made all the more terrifying by the history in which they’re grounded. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Demchuk gracefully pieces together a dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose. These stories read like beautiful and brutal nightmares, sharply disquieting, and are made all the more terrifying by the history in which they’re grounded.”

— Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

“Well crafted and significant in its own right, Demchuk’s novel seems all the more important in light of recent displays of far-right and overt Nazi hatred. As one narrator says, ‘Some stories need to be told time and again. Every generation forgets. Every child learns anew.'”

— The Globe and Mail

“The Bone Mother by Toronto author David Demchuk is one of the boundary-pushing works by emerging writers contending for the award.”

— Peterborough Examiner (On Giller Prize Longlist Selection)

"David Demchuk's The Bone Mother, a fable filled with mythical creatures ranging from werewolves to witches, and is set, in part, among the villages of eastern Europe on the eve of the Second World War is one of three first-time authors on the (Giller Prize) longlist."

— The Globe & Mail (On Giller Prize Longlist Selection)

From the Publisher