Goth Girls of Banff
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2020
- Subjects
- Short Stories (single author), Literary
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eBook
- ISBN
- 9781988732961
- Publish Date
- Nov 2020
- List Price
- $11.99
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Description
Shortlisted for a 2021 ReLit Award in the short fiction category!
Finalist for Trade Fiction Book of the Year at the 2021 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
John O’Neill’s gothic short stories, set in the Canadian Rockies, are haunted by the violence inherent in nature and humans. The mountains are majestic and impassive. The characters are surprising, bent, but also empathetic. Their survival is tenuous. A two-sister team of goth tour guides offers guided excursions up switchback mountain trails; a paroled convict thumbs his way into the life of a family driving west; and an animal pathologist, while performing a necropsy on a grizzly bear, has an unusual encounter with both technology and humanity.
Goth Girls of Banff is a superb collection, sharply written, with plot turns as consequence-laden as those on an iced-over mountain road.
About the author
John O'Neill is the author of the novel Fatal Light Awareness and four poetry collections, Animal Walk, Love in Alaska, The Photographer of Wolves, and Criminal Mountains. He was raised in Scarborough, Ontario, where his parents worked for many years as building superintendents, an aspect of his history explored in The Photographer of Wolves. He was a winner in the Prairie Fire Long Poem Contest and Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize, and the recipient of a 'Maggie' - a Manitoba Magazine Award - for Best Story for his "The Book About The Bear." John was a finalist, with his manuscript Goth Girls of Banff (Newest Press 2020), for the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction. He taught high-school English and Dramatic Arts for 29 years, and now lives and writes in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto. He and his artist wife Ann make frequent trips to Canada's Rocky Mountains, and this landscape continues to be a major influence on his writing.
Awards
- Short-listed, ReLit Award for short fiction!
Excerpt: Goth Girls of Banff (by (author) John O'Neill)
from “Goth Girls of Banff”
Wanna add some edge to your mountain experience? To sharpen the dull blade of things, and let darkness descend, like beautiful sleep but with your eyes wide open? Call the Goth Girls of Banff. Available for photo shoots, social events, hikes, campfires, singly or in groups. Fully outfitted in deepest and darkest Gothwear, we can be more or less Vampiric, more or less Victorian, more or less Silent Film Man-Eaters and Vamps, and more or less Necromantic and Living Dead, according to special requests. If you’re tired of silly Tilley hats and Gore-Tex, cotton and khaki and crave a touch of leather and lace, we’re the gory Goth girls dressed up just for you. We’re all about Goth aesthetics, no funny business, no sticky situations, no touchy-feely or long longing gazes, and absolutely no fiddly long-term relations. Interactions start at $100 per hour. Prices negotiable for entire afternoons. Can talk evenings for a fee. Request times, locations and nature of encounters. Terms and conditions apply and must be set prior to engagements. Goth Girls of Banff. We’ll wrap dark wings around your wilderness day.
Editorial Reviews
"Like a moguls champ, O’Neill seamlessly glides over narrative twists and turns to deliver thrilling short stories of authentic mountain flavour."
~ AMA Insider Magazine
"The characters who populate this winning collection make the pilgrimage to Banff with expectations, usually of salvation. What they find is something distinctly less divine. Any hope of communion with nature is either thwarted by mundane human interference or the revelation of violence that lurks just below all that beauty.”
~ Zachary Abram, Canadian Literature
"If you’ve ever wanted to visit Banff, I suggest picking this book up. It will frighten you and inspire you and, in the end, you might just yearn for a slice of that adventure too."
~ Myshara Herbert-McMyn, The Ormsby Review
"The depth and variety of perspectives O'Neill writes make this collection a staggeringly endearing pastiche."
~ Courtney Eathorne, Booklist
"Whether looking for a story about the Rocky Mountains’ breathtaking (often literal) nature, or for some stories to pull on your heartstrings and teach you about what makes us human, O’Neill’s Goth Girls of Banff is a collection that has something for everyone."
~ Skylar Kay, FreeFall Magazine
"O'Neill is a skilled stylist. His use of language and image is vivid and crisp, the narratives are deeply imaginative and unpredictable."
~ Steven Ross Smith, Alberta Views