For Immediate Release
“The characters of Fatted Calf Blues resonate long after the stories are over: a man in a streetcar proclaiming his genius, a couple who question one another after a love note is found taped to their door, a man at a truck stop who keeps a dream diary.They're curious, funny, wistful; we're sure we've met them somewhere before. With energy and wit, Mayoff shows us all that is familiar, and then tilts the world so it becomes surprising and strange. These are stories to relish-sink your teeth into this book.”
—Anne Simpson, author of Falling
Edgy and Potent Short Fiction Resonates Long After Reading
Winnipeg—Desire, ideals and delusions and the transformative power of loss and mortality form the centre of Steven’s Mayoff’s debut Fatted Calf Blues.
The characters in Fatted Calf Blues are united by jubilation and lamentation. Each character struggles in an imperfect world while edging toward their notion of an ideal life. Belonging and the search for home and family are at the center of the title story, “Fatted Calf Blues.” Here, a woman hitchhikes home to Alberta to see her dying father. At a truck stop near Dauphin, Manitoba she meets a fellow traveller who radically changes the course of her homecoming. “The Darkened Door” explores the nature of desire when a couple arrives home to discover an anonymous love note on their apartment door and can’t help but be intrigued. How ideals can become delusions is explored in “The Animal Room” where a university caretaker’s smooth operation of his Animal Room is upset shy medical student forces him to examine a lost part of himself.
In their own way, each of these stories reveals the dark and difficult pathways that must be traveled in order to come to some sense of self-knowledge.
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We hope you will consider reviewing Fatted Calf Blues.
If you would like to arrange an interview with Steven Mayoff, or for more information, please contact Todd Besant at Turnstone Press by phone, (204) 947-1555 or by email. If a review results from this correspondence, a tear sheet mailed to the below address would be greatly appreciated.
Todd Besant
Managing Editor, Turnstone Press
018-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1H3
Phone: 204-947-1555 Fax: 204-942-1555
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