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Strange Heaven
by Lynn Coady
Goose Lane Editions, 1998.

Reviewed by Michael Bryson

And you thought your family was crazy. Pick up Lynn Coady's award-winning first novel and learn something new about dysfunctional family systems. Coady's protagonist is an unwed teenage mom who gives her baby up for adoption then plops herself in a mental institution. Halfway through the novel the girl goes home for Christmas and the reader sees her family ain't any more sane than her fellow asylum inmates. This is a book with more honesty and grit that a hundred other first novels. It deservedly won Coady the Air Canada Award (for writers under 30) and snared a nomination for the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary prize. A marvelous new voice out of the Maritimes. A great book. Read it!

Michael Bryson is the editor of The Danforth Review.

 

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The Danforth Review is produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All content is copyright of the person who created it and cannot be copied, printed, or downloaded without the consent of that person. See the masthead on the submissions page for editorial information. All views expressed are those of the writer only. International submissions are encouraged. The Danforth Review is archived in the Library and Archives Canada. ISSN 1494-6114. 

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