Bookmark and Share

BOOKS IN PRINT

Making Light of Tragedy by Jessica Grant  

Jessica Grant flies under the radar of realism to find targets worth writing about. These stories are profound, magical and true to life. Nothing seems impossible. It’s good to be reminded of that.

Can a story be both a shrug and a prayer? Can it punch you in the arm because, hey, it is only joking, and the next minute fall at your feet, cling to your knees, beg you to listen? Sure. The stories in Making Light of Tragedy are arrogant and uncertain. (This is not a contradiction.) They make no apologies for poor taste, or the occasional rhyme, but they do make a few demands. These include:

Let there be light. Let there be no more epigraphs. Let the ski jumper take off. Let him never ever land. Let us cut limbs, when necessary. And the word count too. Let this be true. Let one person speak the truth. Let Peter Mansbridge be the ghost of Christmas future.

In this first collection by Journey Prize-winner Jessica Grant, you’ll find twenty-three bite-sized stories, with guest appearances by Holt Renfrew’s daughter, Chantal Hébert, Napoleon, the Management, the Senior Climatologist, the Dean of Humanity, Jon Bon Jovi, Virginia Woolf and God.

prize

2005—ForeWord Magazine, Book of the Year (Short Stories),
Shortlisted

Review quote

’The majority of these stories ... take only a few paragraphs to assume a vivid largeness. Their worlds feel, if not always lived in, at least concrete. Happily, the book ends on a peak with "Milaken", the longest and most intimate story. Revolving around the rock-climbing title character whose father named her after his favourite brand of cement, the story highlights the greatest strengths of Grant’s writing. The story is observant, playful, and empathetic. As the characters ask themselves if they would be willing to sever one of their arms and leave it trapped under a boulder forever just to go on living, we glimpse the varied ways the question echoes through their lives. Here Grant draws resonance from the hypothetical. Her rewarding excursions into this protean realm make for a promising debut.’

—Stewart Cole, Quill and Quire

Review quote

‘Grant’s Making Light of Tragedy is a book for the eclectic coffee shop, preferably midday when the café is busy and chances are good that you’ll bump into someone who is curious about what you are reading -- because you will want to talk about some, if not all, of the twenty-three stories.’

—Lisa Grekul, event

Review quote

‘This collection is worth the purchase price for the opening story alone: a wife’s tale of her ski-jumper husband, who takes off in Olympic competition and just never comes down, in a scant six pages meditating touchingly and amusingly on faith, science, the media and love. Twenty-two more brief, compelling, smart and funny stories follow. Their subjects range from the nature of ugliness to the lengths one man will go to avoid shoveling snow; their wit and heart, and Grant’s abundant skill, are reminiscent of the author’s fellow Newfoundlander Lorrie Moore.’

—The Ruminator

Review quote

Making Light of Tragedy is aptly titled; its stories are sharp, observant and a great pleasure to read, and their mostly serious subject matter is thoroughly skewered. Grant has delivered an impressive debut. This is a provocative and engaging collection that left this writer wanting more.’

—Nancy Jo Cullen, Alberta Views

Review quote

Making Light of Tragedy is a stunning debut from Jessica Grant, who gets my vote for most promising short story writer in Canada. The book collects 23 short stories and recalls in some respects the wonderful stories of David Arnason, though Grant’s writing is much less fantastical and also more concerned with character. The stories are smart, funny, and even sweet at moments without becoming saccharine. There is also a certain degree of arrogance to the prose and on the part of the many first-person narrators. It’s a welcoming, self-assured sort of arrogance, the kind that is sorely lacking in too much Canadian fiction.’

—Jonathan Ball, Prairie Fire

Review quote

‘Grant doesn’t just make you see, she makes you believe, however vaguely off-kilter each story’s world is.’

—Vicki Ziegler, Bookgaga

Review quote

‘Jessica Grant (my favourite literary discovery of the year) might well be the freshest, most distinctive and original voice in the country.’

—Chad Pelley, Salty Ink

Review quote

‘Jessica Grant’s stories have a habit of cutting the legs out from under you, but they mean no harm. They just want to live under your skin for a while. Roll around in them, play with them like a lottery winner with a bathtub full of money.’

—Lee Shedden, The Calgary Herald

Review quote

‘In her debut collection of stories, Jessica Grant displays a real gift for making light of tragedy. If that doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, another way to phrase it might be making lightness from tragedy. A native of St. John’s, Newfoundland, now based in Calgary (and a member along with Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, and others of St. John’s remarkable Burning Rock writer’s collective), Grant treats the disasters and mishaps that befall her characters not with ridicule but a wry sense of humour and a considerable amount of sympathy. That much is clear in ‘‘Cleave,’’ the story that contains the title of Grant’s book. One character, who is dressed for Halloween as Virginia Woolf, explains how two women in his office came to a meeting in the guise of ‘‘those conjoined twins from Iran.’’ As you might expect, the costume is deemed to be in very poor taste. ‘‘The VP of distribution admonished the twins for making light of tragedy,’’ writes Grant. The character later finds one of the women crying in the mezzanine, stroking the wigs. ‘‘But no one understands,’’ she tells him. ‘‘I /loved/ the conjoined twins from Iran. The night of their operation in Singapore, I kept vigil. When they died, a piece of me died too.’’ ’

—Jason Anderson, amazon.ca

Review quote

‘These stories are filled with cutting, precise wit, astonishing, original imagery -- I particularly love some of the seeming throwaway lines, like ‘‘The sky on the other side of the ceiling threatened rain,’’ from ‘‘Tuan Vu’’ -- and despite the idiosyncratic nature of many of Jessica Grant’s characters, true one-to-one human connection, over and over again, in situations where connection would seem unlikely, if not impossible. She manages a wonderful, delicate balancing act -- making us laugh, and enjoy, while never letting us off the hook. It’s a superb work.’

—Glenn Raucher, amazon.com

Review quote

‘Jessica Grant’s story collection opens with the Journey Prize-winning ‘‘My Husband’s Jump’’. An Olympic ski jumper soars over a cheering crowd into a perfect sky: up and up and ... well, up. By tale’s end, he’s still up, while strained efforts to make sense of it (doping investigations, wind theory, hoax, adultery) have long since come to naught. Meanwhile, his narrating spouse has attained a kind of whimsical equilibrium borne on new faith: ‘‘Lost a husband, gained a deity. What did it mean? It was like inheriting a pet, unexpectedly. A very large Saint Bernard.’’

‘Whimsy’s appeal can easily fade. Here, Grant wields it like a veil fluttered before the light of her gathering purpose, then eased aside for a shimmering finale. With this opening, Grant plays her ace. In another 22 impulsive stories, she sails blithely through shoals of thematic and structural caprice, taking on water if never quite foundering.’

—Jim Bartley, Globe & Mail

Review quote

‘When the narrator’s husband takes his final Olympic ski jump, in the winning story ‘‘My Husband’s Jump’’ by Jessica Grant, he never lands. This story suggests to us that the physical and spiritual world may be brought into occasional and very surprising contact. The husband goes up, but never comes down, leaving the wife to become a believer and the believers to cry foul. This often hilarious story struck the jury as virtually flawless. We agreed that there wasn’t a word more or less than required. Jessica Grant’s skilful and playful language gave wings to the story and carried us away.’

—Jury’s comments, the 2004 Journey Prize

Review quote

Making Light of Tragedy offers up a collection of irresistibly endearing characters bordering on neurotic, from irascible (not to mention irresponsible) book reviewers to know-it-all roofers. They’re a group of outsiders longing for connection, but often a little bit afraid of it, finding safety in their routines and refuges. They are so vulnerable (whether they’ll admit it or not) that their acts of courage, of striking out in some way, are all the more admirable.’

—JK, The Keepin’ It Real Book Club

Unpublished endorsement

‘Jessica Grant is another in a line of impressive Newfoundland writers. Like Lisa Moore and Lorrie Moore, her fictional world is ominous and sensuous. Grant’s stories possess voices that are musical, darting and yet insistent; they map odd romances with understated language and cool-eyed wit.’

—Mark Anthony Jarman

Unpublished endorsement

‘Every image detonates, every word crackles. Grant’s writing is whimsical, sophisticated, and brand spanking new. This book sizzles. It’s hot.’

—Lisa Moore


authorPic

Jessica Grant is from St. John’s, Newfoundland, but loves all provinces and territories equally. She has lived in Toronto, Buffalo, Portland and Calgary. She is a proud member of Burning Rock, a group of very hip writers in St. John’s who kindly took her into their fold a few years ago. She has been a technical writer and a singer-songwriter, but writing stories is by far the best job she’s had.

The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Site Search

Buy from your local independent booksellerBuy AbeBooksPreview Google

FICTION / Short Stories

FICTION / Literary

ISBN-13: 9780889842533

Publication Date: 2004-09-15

Dimensions: 8.75 in x 5.56 in

Pages: 208

Price: $18.95