All Saints
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award
In a linked collection that presents the secreted small tragedies of an Anglican congregation struggling to survive, All Saints delves into the life of Simon, the Reverend, and the lives of his parishioners: Miss Alice Vipond, a refined and elderly schoolteacher, incarcerated for a horrendous crime; a woman driven to extreme anxiety by borderline-abusive sex; Owen, “The Shitblood Man,” who, lost in the woods, loses himself in a fit of rage; a receptionist and her act of improbable generosity; a writer making peace with her divorce. Effortlessly written and candidly observed, All Saints is a moving collection of tremendous skill, whose intersecting stories illuminate the tenacity and vulnerability of modern-day believers.
Praise for All Saints
"Fictional places have been mostly secular of late: the home, the bar, the workplace. Standing at the centre of K.D. Miller's touching and intimate collection of linked stories is, unfashionably, a church. All Saints is not just the setting for the habits and rituals of this motley group—parishioners, priest, passersby—but the central image that gives these stories their poignancy. As obsolescence threatens the church, it also puts in peril the connections each character has to others at the very time the world so badly needs human connections. All Saints is a moving and soulful book."—Caroline Adderson
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this collection of linked short stories, Miller (Brown Dwarf) writes about the lives of the parishioners and affiliates of All Saints Anglican Church in Toronto. Each story focuses on a different character. Simon, the church's rector, appears in many of the stories and is the focus of one that explores his relationship with his suicidal wife and his feelings for someone new. Other standout characters include Emily, a writer; Owen, an outsider who first appears as a background character and later as the main one; and Garth, equal parts real (in the fictional world of the book) and imagined (in Emily's literary imagination). Miller, who has previously published collections of essays, short stories and a novel, has an ease of style that produces elegant turns of phrase. Describing one church member's hesitations towards religious modernization Miller writes, "She prefers her religion distant and monumental." The overlapping narratives weave the stories and recurring themes together. Love, faith, marriage, sex, death, aging, mental illness and the meaning of community are all explored with dignity.
