SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 AMAZON CANADA FIRST NOVEL AWARD!
LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2017 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE!
FINALIST FOR THE 2017 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD!
Three neighbouring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind—and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary—they tell their stories and confront their destinies. The creatures include:
Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers—and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall—will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.
"Demchuk gracefully pieces together a dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose. These stories read like beautiful and brutal nightmares, sharply disquieting, and are made all the more terrifying by the history in which they?re grounded."
- Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
David Demchuk
was born and raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. He has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio and other media for more than thirty years. His publications include the short-fiction cycle Seven Dreams and the Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Cyberspace, and appearances in the anthologies Making, Out!, Outspoken and Canadian Brash. His reviews, essays, interviews and columns have appeared in such magazines as Toronto Life, Xtra, What! Magazine and Prairie Fire, as well as the Toronto Star. Most recently he has been a contributing writer for the digital magazine Torontoist. The Bone Mother is his first novel.
2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award finalist
On the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Long-List
Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers?and the mortals who live at their side and in their thrall?will chill your marrow and tear at your heart.
"Demchuk gracefully pieces together a dark and shining mosaic of a story with unforgettable imagery and elegant, evocative prose. These stories read like beautiful and brutal nightmares, sharply disquieting, and are made all the more terrifying by the history in which they're grounded."
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Well crafted and significant in its own right, Demchuk's novel seems all the more important in light of recent displays of far-right and overt Nazi hatred. As one narrator says, 'Some stories need to be told time and again. Every generation forgets. Every child learns anew.'"
— The Globe and Mail
"The Bone Mother by Toronto author David Demchuk is one of the boundary-pushing works by emerging writers contending for the award."
— Peterborough Examiner (On the book's Giller Prize Longlist Selection)
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