The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating forty years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
BOOKS IN PRINT
Onlyville by Cynthia Holz
The story of a young woman coming of age in the tumultuous Watergate years.
When Anna Berman leaves her boyfriend Sal and heads for the family cottage on an island off Cape Cod, she expects solitude and time to think. What she does not expect are uninvited house guests -- first Sal, then her teenage niece and a strange friend, and finally her father’s girlfriend. Anna is drawn into a tumult of precarious relationships, both present and past, and is challenged by ambivalent feelings and shifting allegiances.
Review quote
‘Onlyville opens in 1974 on the eastern seaboard of the United States against the background of the Watergate scandal and the pulsating pressure to impeach Richard Nixon. But all that is merely white noise for Anna Berman, who is floundering in her own turbid crisis. At 29, she has most of an undergraduate degree, a non-career as a temp, and an aging and overwhelming lover, Sal, a paranoid Korean War vet. In desperation Anna flees to her family’s abandoned cottage in Onlyville. She dives into her past, hoping to emerge refreshed and unfettered by the ghost of her mother, who one day, years before, left Anna sitting on the beach, watching, while she swam away until she disappeared.’
—Quill & Quire
Review quote
‘In telling Anna’s tale, Holz moves back and forth through layers of time, revealing her family’s past, their mistakes and marriages over three decades. ... Onlyville is no lightweight beach novel. Holz’s characters vibrate with ambiguities, their actions posing questions that will have no answer. ... Ultimately, Onlyville is a compassionate story of a woman’s quest for understanding.’
—The Toronto Star
Review quote
‘To anyone contemplating writing a novel about family, modern life and how social and political movements shape destinies: Read and cherish Onlyville. Book lovers, savor this handsomely produced book, illustrated with a dozen exquisite engravings by G. Brender ´ Brandis. And readers, be grateful for Cynthia Holz, who has the gift.’
—The Ottawa Citizen
Review quote
‘It is 1974, Richard Nixon is on the hot seat and Anna Berman is off to Onlyville. The island, cottage, summer home of her childhood and present-day refuge, it’s ‘‘a blank space, a hole in time, a place to enter and rest in.’’ ... There in the cottage of her childhood, where the past seems to seep through the very floorboards, Anna squares off with her own history while the mess of big-h History -- Watergate -- unravels all about her ...’
—Globe & Mail
Cynthia Holz was born in the Bronx in 1950. She completed her education at Queens College of the City University of New York where she graduated in English in 1971. She has worked as a journalist and a teacher and presently resides in Toronto.
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.
