Eden Robinson

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize: With striking originality and precision, Eden Robinson, the author of the classic Monkey Beach and winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada Fellowship, blends humour with heartbreak in this compelling coming-of-age novel. Everyday teen existence meets indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics, and cannibalistic river otters . . . The exciting first novel in her trickster trilogy. Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead. Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat...and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don't.

Son of a Trickster

In a novel set in Canada, on the Haisla reservation of Kitamaat, a young Native American woman's visions facilitate a journey of self-discovery that will take her into the heart of her troubled society.

Monkey Beach

Following the Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted Son of a Trickster comes Trickster Drift, the second book in Eden Robinson's captivating Trickster trilogy. In an effort to keep all forms of magic at bay, Jared, 17, has quit drugs and drinking. But his troubles are not over: now he's being stalked by David, his mom's ex--a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking. And his mother, Maggie, a living, breathing badass as well as a witch, can't protect him like she used to because he's moved away from Kitimat to Vancouver for school. Even though he's got a year of sobriety under his belt (no thanks to his enabling, ever-partying mom), Jared also struggles with the temptation of drinking. And he's got to get his grades up, find a job that doesn't involve weed cookies, and somehow live peacefully with his Aunt Mave, who has been estranged from the family ever since she tried to "rescue" him as a baby from his mother. An indigenous activist and writer, Mave smothers him with pet names and hugs, but she is blind to the real dangers that lurk around them--the spirits and supernatural activity that fill her apartment. As the son of a Trickster, Jared is a magnet for magic, whether he hates it or not--he sees ghosts, he sees the monster moving underneath his Aunt Georgina's skin, he sees the creature that comes out of his bedroom wall and creepily wants to suck his toes. He also still hears the Trickster in his head, and other voices too. When the David situation becomes a crisis, Jared can't ignore his true nature any longer.

Trickster Drift

The third and final book of the brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy, from the bestselling author of the Scotiabank Giller-prize finalist Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift. The powerful resolution of a story that has already sparked the new CBC-TV series Trickster and inspired the debaters on Canada Reads Jared, teenaged trouble magnet, wakes up in a hospital bed feeling like hell. Not for the first time. Some of the people he loves--the ones who are deaf to the magic that swirls around him--assume he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety. They think that's why movers found him naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat. The truth for Jared is so much worse. He finally knows for sure that he has no hope of ever being normal because he really is the son of Wee'git, a Trickster, and he's won the magic lottery--he is the only one of Wee'git's 535 children who is a Trickster too. He is actually in such bad shape because he was forced into mortal combat with his father's sister, Aunt Georgina, a maniacal ogress hungry for his power. In the struggle, he transported her and her posse of shape-shifting coy wolves to another dimension where the coy wolves all died. Now Georgina doesn't only want to turn him into her slave, she wants revenge on his whole family. There's more bad news: the only person in his life who is happy that he's a Trickster is his ex, Sarah. Everyone else he loves is either pissed with him or in danger from the dark forces he's accidentally unleashed in their world. His mother Maggie, a hard-partying, gun-toting, tough-as-nails witch, resents like hell that Jared has taken after his father, but she is also determined that no one is going to hurt her boy. For Maggie it's simple--Kill or be killed, bucko--and soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war. A horrible place to be for the sweetest Trickster there's ever been, one whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world around him a kinder, safer, place.

Return of the Trickster

A world of comic strip characters comes alive when cartoonist Walter Geebus is hospitalized and his colleagues search for a temporary replacement, in a rollicking tale set against the backdrop of 1936 New York. Reprint.

Traplines

This eagerly anticipated new novel is Eden Robinson’s most satisfying, disturbing, and addictive to date. A new novel from one of our best young writers, Blood Sports is the tough, gritty story of the brutal cat-and-mouse relationship between two cousins — Tom and Jeremy Bauer — set in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. Tom, a young man, hardly innocent, has been caught up over the years in Jeremy’s world of drugs, extortion, and prostitutes, while Jeremy, vindictive, vicious, either protects Tom or uses him, but always controls him. Added to the mix is Paulie, a junkie two years clean and Tom’s girlfriend, and also the mother of his daughter. This lethal triangle shifts when word gets out Tom has been talking to the police, and men from the past who have a lot to lose reappear. Suddenly Tom and Paulie are pawns in a much larger game, with everything at stake. With the storytelling skill and engrossing characterizations that have made her previous books so popular, Robinson keeps the tension humming in this riveting novel. This is Eden Robinson at the height of her powers. “I was born on the same day as Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton. I am absolutely certain that this affects my writing in some way.” —Eden Robinson From the Hardcover edition.

Blood Sports

Growing up a tough, wild tomboy, swimming, fighting and fishing in the remote Native village of Kitamaat, where the land slips into the green ocean on the northern edge of the world and strange things bubble below the surface, LisaMarie has always been different. Visited by ghosts and shapeshifters, tormented by premonitions, she can't escape the sense that something terrible is waiting for her at the end of the line. Then one day her little brother Jimmy goes missing at sea, and as LisaMarie sits waiting for news, aged nineteen but feeling a hundred, she sorts through the blackest secrets of her damaged life, in search of hope. Wild, sensuous and terrifying, MONKEY BEACH binds our most primal fears to an exquisitely haunting landscape in an unforgettable modern ghost story.

traditional protocols & modern storytelling

The Sasquatch at home

The award-winning Indigenous author of Monkey Beach shares tales from her family, her life, and her culture. In March 2010 the Canadian Literature Centre hosted award-winning novelist and storyteller Eden Robinson at the 4th annual Henry Kreisel Lecture. Robinson shared an intimate look into the intricacies of family, culture, and place through her talk, “The Sasquatch at Home.” Robinson’s disarming honesty and wry irony shine through her depictions of her and her mother’s trip to Graceland, the Potlatch where she and her sister received their Indian names, how her parents first met in Bella Bella (Waglisla, British Columbia) and a wilderness outing where she and her father try to get a look at b’gwus, the Sasquatch. Readers of memoir; Indigenous literatures, histories and cultures; and fans of Robinson’s delightful, poignant, sometimes quirky tales will love The Sasquatch at Home. “[Robinson] strikes sweetly at the commonality of people rather than narrowing in on cultural differences. The entire book is fast, colloquial, and engaging; concise enough to be read in one sitting, yet retaining the weightiness of a larger work. Its brevity makes it an ideal re-read and the second reading proves just as entertaining. The funny parts remain funny, the rendering of landscapes evocative and intimate, and the general themes stay relevant. Through rich and often comic dialogue and her painterly descriptions of the northwest landscape, Eden Robinson presents a glimpse into her community with the delicious, whispered quality of a well-told, yet well-protected, family story.” —Cara-Lyn Morgan, The Malahat Review, Winter 2011 “Offers the reader a taste of her skill as a storyteller. The book is a tiny gem. . . . This brilliant little jewel, under fifty pages, offers readers a quick, but intense opportunity to experience the work of a rising Canadian writer. Like her novel, Monkey Beach, the accessibility of The Sasquatch at Home suggests its appropriateness for use in undergraduate courses. Above all, it is an essential acquisition for anyone with an interest in Pacific Northwest or Native Canadian studies, but it is also a find for those who just like a good story.” —Amy J. Ransom, American Review of Canadian Studies

Traditional Protocols & Modern Storytelling

The Sasquatch at Home

From Canada's internationally acclaimed "Generation X laureate" (The New York Times) come four unforgettable stories told with icy clarity and great heart. This is a world in which fast food, banged-up cars and the grunge of modern adolescence barely camouflage the dark extremes of sex, fear and desire — and the longing for love.

Stories

Sabine Hedinger

Roman

Strand der Geister

Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead. Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat... and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don't.

Eden Robinson

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