Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double lifeas the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachiaand the faith and fury of its peopleto rich and vivid life.
Wayne Johnston
was born in Newfoundland in 1958 and grew up in Goulds, a small community a few
miles south of St. John's. When he was a boy, he couldn't imagine a world
beyond the island. "The only outside world I ever saw was on television, and I
didn't really even believe that world existed." People were still divided
over the Confederation with Canada, which had happened only in 1949. His family
had a habit of moving around to different neighborhoods and his schooling was
hyper-Catholic', traits which would feature in his autobiographical first
novel.
He graduated with a BA (Hons) in English from Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and worked from 1979 to 1981 as a reporter at the St. John's Daily
News. Being a reporter was a crash course in how society works, but he realized
he didn't want it as a career. "I'm not that outgoing of a person and you
have to be in order to be a good reporter." He moved away from Newfoundland,
firstly to Ottawa, and took up the writing of fiction full-time. In 1983 he
graduated with an MA from the University of New Brunswick. His first book, The
Story of Bobby O'Malley, was published shortly after, and won the
W.H.Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. He followed this success two years
later with The Time of Their Lives, which won the Canadian Authors'
Association Award for Most Promising Young Writer.
His third novel, The Divine Ryans, again a portrait of Irish
Catholic Newfoundland, centers on a nine-year-old hockey fanatic, whose father
dies and whose family goes to live with relatives who once had money but are
fast declining. Time Out has called it "achingly funny, needle
sharp with heart, soul and brains". One of Johnston's most comic novels,
it earned him the title of the Roddy Doyle of Canada'. The Divine Ryans won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and has been adapted into a
film starring Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite. Johnston wrote the
screenplay himself for this and also for the adaptation of his next novel, Human
Amusements, also optioned for film.
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Johnston's fifth novel, in 1998 was
shortlisted for the most prestigious fiction awards in Canada, the Governor
General's Award and the Giller Prize, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and
the Rogers Communication Writers Trust Fiction Prize; it won the Thomas Raddall
Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. A
glowing New York Times Book Review cover story caused the book to leap to
the upper ranks of the Amazon.com top 100 selling books of the day. It has been
called a Dickensian romp of a novel', which uses the career of
Newfoundland's first premier to create a love story and a tragi-comic elegy to
an impossible country.
Published across North America and Europe in several languages, the novel caused
some controversy in Canada among those who recalled the real Joey Smallwood, a
man who was hated by many Newfoundlanders, including Johnston's own family,
for bringing the island into Canada. Although his strongly anti-confederate
family could barely bring themselves to mention Smallwood's name, Johnston
read a biography of the politician when he was 14.
Johnston considered carefully the different ways of establishing
fictional/historical plausibility' in the novel. Re-reading Don Delillo's
novel Libra, he observed how "Delillo gave himself the freedom to
invent scenes, incidents, conversations as long as they seemed plausible within
the fictional world that he created." He also considered Salman Rushdie's Midnight's
Children, where, in spite of the magic realism, India still gains
independence in 1948, and political figures are elected or assassinated under
the same circumstances as their real-life counterparts. He decided he would not
change or omit anything that was publicly known. "I would fill in the
historical record in a way that could have been true, and flesh out and
dramatize events that, though publicly known, were not recorded in detail. Most
importantly, I would invent for Smallwood a lover/nemesis (Sheilagh Fielding)
who could have existed (but didn't) and wove her and Smallwood's story into the
history of Newfoundland. This would be my plausibility contract with the
reader."
In 1999 he published Baltimore's Mansion, his first non-fiction book, a
family memoir that also became a national bestseller and won the inaugural
Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Johnston uses the stories of his
own childhood and his father and grandfather to cast light on Newfoundland's
struggle over relinquishing independence in 1949. A National Post reviewer
concluded that it was a non-fiction novel' drawing on all Johnston's
narrative powers to "shape the materials of real life into a work of
astonishing beauty and power". In another review, Quill and Quire said "I began to smell the smells, hear the lilt, and experience a sense of the
fierce attachment Newfoundlanders feel to their home province no matter where
they live," commenting that Newfoundland geography, history and culture
permeates Johnston's books.
Johnston has lived in Toronto since 1989, although he has to date written
exclusively about Newfoundland. "I couldn't write about the island while I was
there," he says. "Life was too immediate. I was too inundated by the place
and its details. I'd write about something and see it when I walked across the
street the next day." A "benign homesickness" has become a kind of fuel
for writing about the island. He talks of Newfoundland as being too "overwhelmingly beautiful and substantial" to capture. To write with any
kind of objectivity, "I need distance to get that sense of what is
important and what is significant and what is not."
This biography was last updated on 01/07/2003.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that
some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date,
inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legaciesof magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and lossthat haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stotts first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
read more
I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
read more
The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
read more
Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
Full Story
Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
Full Story