Product Description

In 1982, From a High Thin Wire introduced a powerful new voice into Canadian fiction. Now, twenty years later, Joan Clark, a powerhouse in Canadian fiction, has re-edited her debut collection from the perspective of a more mature writer -- an unusual feat for most writers. The ten frank yet subtle fictions in this collection are loosely based on Joan Clark's own life. Like Emily, a character who recurs in several stories, Clark left Cape Breton for Alberta as a young woman, only to struggle later with her sense of not quite belonging. Shortly after its publication, William French wrote in The Globe and Mail, "[Clark has that admirable ability to peel away the skin and let us see all the complex influences that intersect to make a particular woman act as she does . . . She has a fine sense of the infinite possibilities of life that are somehow never realized because of the limitations of human nature." Having lived in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Alberta, and Newfoundland, Joan Clark brought and still brings an intimate knowledge of many parts of Canada to her writing. In "God's Country," Emily feels compelled to return from Calgary to Harbour Mines, Cape Breton, where she rages against the "eye of God" that has reduced the miner's son she once loved to a mute old man. "Her Father's Daughter" finds the teenaged Emily confusing her affection for her lonely father with her own budding sexual longings. "Historical Fiction," a comic allegory of university life, imagines first-year virgins guarded in their dorm by a witch with a cat named Freud, and in the title story, two sisters come back "from away" to bury their mother, whom they recall as a small bird, "singing from a high, thin wire." Told from the perspective of women at different ages, the stories in From a High Thin Wire explore how childhood experiences can sometimes shape adult choices. They also showcase the genius of the accomplished writer Joan Clark would become.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3518036 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 152 pages

About the Author
Joan Clark is one of Canada's most distinguished authors. In 1982, From a High Thin Wire launched her career as a writer of adult fiction, although she had already won wide praise as a children's novelist. Born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Clark grew up in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, and taught in Sussex, New Brunswick. She lived for many years in Calgary, where she began to make her mark as a writer and where, with Edna Alford, she founded Dandelion, Alberta's first literary magazine. Since the mid-1980s, she has made her home in St. John's, Newfoundland. Clark's books have been translated into French, German, Swedish and Danish. For her children's fiction, she has received the Geoffrey Bilson Award and the Mr. Christie Award. She is the author of three novels and two story collections. Her first novel, The Victory of Geraldine Gull won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award and the W.H. Smith / Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her most recent novel, Latitudes of Melt, was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean). At present, Clark is hard at work on her new novel, forthcoming in 2005.