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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ISSN 1494-6114.
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