The Porcupine's Quill

Newfoundland writer Libby Creelman finds the emotional heart of her characters — characters continually seeking, and breaking, connections with others, though they rarely know it. A girl welcomes cruelty into her life in an attempt to get closer to a father living with chronic pain. A woman obsessed with her lineage draws her family into inheriting more than they bargained for. A young boy, burdened by the adults with whom he keeps company, arrives at the end of a brief sailing trip directing their futures as well as his own. A woman returns home to spend a weekend with old high school friends and at last understands something about her mother that had been trailing her for years.

Suddenly her voice turns soft, almost tender. ‘But you know what you used to say at bedtime, don’t you? You used to hold my face in your hands, and say, ‘‘You’re the best mommy in the universe.’’ ’... She wants us to savour the image of me holding her face, cherishing her, reading her mind.

These are stories about dislocation and about home -- about leaving it, returning to it, needing it, rejecting it -- crafted in a style that is controlled, yet sympathetic.

Review quote

‘Walking in Paradise is Libby Creelman’s first book. The collection’s fourteen stories, each between ten and fifteen pages in length, are carefully polished and almost uniformly effective. Creelman’s style is spare and direct. The sentences are short and crisp, and an emphasis is placed on clear concrete imagery. The stories often unfold through dialogue and Creelman’s ear is unerring as each of the characters is granted a distinctive voice.’

—David Creelman, The Fiddlehead

Promotional headline

Walking in Paradise was shortlisted for the first annual Winterset Award for ‘excellence in Newfoundland writing’ administered by The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. This prize was established to commemorate the memory of the St John’s-born social historian and prize-winning author Sandra Fraser Gwyn who did so much to promote an awareness of the arts of Newfoundland across the country. The award is named after the house, on Winter Avenue in St John’s, where Sandra grew up and lived until the age of eleven when her parents moved to the mainland. Soon afterwards, the house, one of the oldest residential properties in the city, was demolished.

Unpublished endorsement

‘These are stories about family, where love is at once most expected and most guarded. Libby Creelman’s narrative touch, which is deceptively casual, is laced with small, true moments and brief true gestures, which are to be trusted.’

—Bonnie Burnard

Unpublished endorsement

‘There must be some crystal in Libby Creelman’s inner eye to see what she sees of the strange currents that spark between her sophisticated, brittle adults and sharp, bewildered children. Her craft is crystal anyway. I already treasure this book.’

—Stan Dragland