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REVIEWS
“Like Elizabeth Hay’s Late
Nights on Air, Fierce
benefits from its largely northern setting,
a still under-explored back road in Canadian
fiction. . . . Penetrating and smart and a
welcome antidote to the current vogue for
alleged family values. . . . Treat yourself
to its unique mix of irreverence, compassion
and horse laughs. And then pass it along to
a loved one.”
— National
Post
“As strong a first collection as we have any
right to hope. . . . Holborn repeatedly
demonstrates her skill in handling utterly
disparate, and wholly unique, characters in
surprising, and often surprisingly
effective, ways. . . .River
Rising,
the novella that rounds out the book [is] a
painful, often funny, bitingly realistic yet
archly surreal story [that] seems to burst
at the seams with life.”
— Edmonton
Journal
“[Fierce has]
a bracing farcical edge that could hardly be
blacker. . . . Holborn’s double high-wire
act leaps effortlessly between funny and
tragic. . . . [Her] visuals are cinematic.”
— The
Globe and Mail
“The best stories . . . embody whole worlds.
Such is true of the tough tales in Fierce.
. . . The sassy grit of her characters and
their tenacious humour — wry, raw, even
twisted — get them through. Now and then,
naked emotion pierces through their stubborn
wit, like a shard of glass.”
— Montreal Gazette
“Holborn’s collection of stories is electric
with wit and insight. Sassy, sexy, full of
willful women, nasty business, a few freaks,
some drunks, acts of adultery and
abandonment, the voice of God and veins of
gold. It’s fierce.”
— Lisa Moore, author of Alligator and Open
“Holborn, a gutsy writer from British
Columbia, fills the pages of her latest
collection with . . . one-of-a-kind
characters, in stories that run the gamut
from unfortunately heartbreaking to
unaccountably hopeful.”
— Canadian
Living
"(Holborn's) collection of varied tales
(has) tragedy and violent drama crackling
with comedic noir and irony that borders
tenderly-spun farce."--Kelly McManus, North
Shore Outlook
"(Holborn's) imagination...runs riot with
vivid and eccentric characters. (Her)
scenarios vary from Monty Python to Russian
tragedy. Nothing is normal in Holborn’s
world."--Jan DeGrass, Coast Reporter
"The stories in “Fierce” contain beautiful
writing, offbeat characters, and strange
scenarios...there is humanity and honesty in
this collection that really makes it
work."--Alexis Kienlen, Grande Prairie Ink
"Holborn impresses with her eye for detail,
the unusual and those living on the
margins... when the author anchors...whimsy
to compassion, her
fiction resonates deeply."--Brett Josef Grubisic, The Vancouver Sun
"I loved
the bizarre worlds created in these stories.
Magical, surreal, and yet too real, almost
too painful, as the characters grieve, hope,
and dream."--Ania Vesenny
"The short stories and final novella in this
collection are like backstories to those
pictures you run across where something
strange and maybe slightly soiled is
happening in medias res and you
wonder what led up to the moment."--scotchneat.ca
"A punky young woman dealing with
heart-rending loss; an aging female
prospector coping with ghost from her past;
the experiences of a boy bounced from foster
home to foster home; a woman, embarrassed by
an unsightly birthmark, is helped by a
mythical sea goddess; a mother struggling
with her daughter's diagnosis; three
generations of a small town struggling to
find joy in spite of fate and poor judgement
– all these are unblinkingly, yet lovingly,
described by Holborn."--Peace Arch News
"Truthfully, I wasn’t optimistic about Fierce when
I started it. This Canadian collection of
shorts stories and a novella features more
emotionally and physically damaged people
than it should be humanly possible for one
writer to conjure. Doesn’t the author,
Hannah Holborn, know anyone
even remotely normal?But then a strange
thing happened during ‘The Indian Act’. I
sort of fell in love. Suddenly these crazy,
damaged, sad people started making
sense to me."--Read 'em and eat
Don’t imagine (Fierce) to be depressing, it
isn’t. It delves into peoples’ lives in
fascinating ways...Difficult
as their lives are, I felt at the end I
wanted the story go on.--R&B |
READ THE FULL REVIEW
The National Post
The Edmonton Journal
The Globe and Mail
The Montreal Gazette
North Shore Outlook
Coast Reporter
Grande Prairie Ink
Ania Vesenny
Scotchneat.ca
Peace Arch News
Read 'em and eat
R&B
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