Featured Author
Hannah Holborn
Fierce
Fresh, tough, and thoroughly addictive, this sparkling debut collection
calls to mind the beloved and bestselling works of Lisa Moore, Camilla Gibb,
and Mark Haddon.
With an irresistible combination of playfulness and empathy, these
effervescent, sometimes heartbreaking tales of underachieving adults,
unfairly burdened children, and the unaccountably hopeful of all ages
explore the moments of grace in lives that are too often defined by loss.
A punky young woman comes to terms with the accident that took away all of
her family except the grandmother who believes she is a bird, and an aging
prospector — a woman — discovers that a physical “curse” might have been
something of a blessing all along. “The Indian Act” is a compact
coming-of-age story, charting the journey of a boy who, though bounced
through many foster homes, holds on to the dream of love and unconditional
acceptance; and in the novella “River Rising,” three generations in a small
town struggle toward joy despite the accidents of fate and the foolish
mistakes that almost, but not quite, derail their lives.
Fierce introduces
Hannah Holborn as a shining new light in Canadian fiction.
Reviews
“[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) 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
