Tell It Slant is a bold, luscious first novel by Beth Follett, publisher of one of Canada's most exciting and respected small presses, Pedlar Press.

Out of the pages of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and into a blustery Montreal weekend steps a modern-day Nora Flood, plundering vivid memories across three Canadian cities – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal – to uncover the roots of a sexual obsession that has her trapped in its sterile heart.

But through the magical interventions of her literary creator, Djuna Barnes, this Nora begins to undress her romantic illusions, so that her obsession begins to expand, deepen and open out, pointing to a life she might claim as her own.

With language that is lush and startling and a shape that is disjointed and elliptical, Tell It Slant is a brave and beautiful book.

Beth Follett is the founder and publisher of Pedlar Press, a Canadian literary house. Her first novel, Tell it Slant (Coach House Books, 2001), a retelling of Djuna Barnes’s 1936 novel Nightwood, met with critical acclaim. Her poetry, prose and nonfiction work have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, and elsewhere. She lives in St John’s, NL.

Beth Follett's profile page