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October 2001.
Paul Coates is flying to Vancouver for a writers' festival, but also to meet a giant from his past; Knut Knutsen, whose ruined shoulder dislocated with any serious throw. For a year while Paul's father chased the dream of a pro football franchise, Knut lived in a flat under the family house, doing a writing degree by correspondence in his spare time, sending pieces to the New Yorker and Paris Review. He told Paul stories too, including giant stories, in which the giants sometimes confounded expectations and were wise and thoughtful.
Now, Paul is in North America to promote his first novel there and Knut is a professor in a small-town liberal arts college, and best known for his microfictions and a novelised account of his great grandfather's life as a doctor in Alaska in the late nineteenth century. But it's October 2001, and North America has a lot of other concerns besides Paul's book. He had dreamed of arriving in triumph, or at least with prospects. But perhaps, with the lack of any and with the changes in the world, he needs his father's giant as much as he did years before.
"One of Earls's strengths as a writer of fiction is his sharp observation of domestic detail; -another is his keen awareness of how our cultural life intermingles with the quotidian reality of family routine." - The Australian
"You can't write better than this. It's simply perfect." - Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic, Eat Pray Love) on Gotham
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paul Coates is flying to Vancouver for a writers' festival, but also to meet a giant from his past; Knut Knutsen, whose ruined shoulder dislocated with any serious throw. For a year while Paul's father chased the dream of a pro football franchise, Knut lived in a flat under the family house, doing a writing degree by correspondence in his spare time, sending pieces to the New Yorker and Paris Review. He told Paul stories too, including giant stories, in which the giants sometimes confounded expectations and were wise and thoughtful.
Now, Paul is in North America to promote his first novel there and Knut is a professor in a small-town liberal arts college, and best known for his microfictions and a novelised account of his great grandfather's life as a doctor in Alaska in the late nineteenth century. But it's October 2001, and North America has a lot of other concerns besides Paul's book. He had dreamed of arriving in triumph, or at least with prospects. But perhaps, with the lack of any and with the changes in the world, he needs his father's giant as much as he did years before.
"One of Earls's strengths as a writer of fiction is his sharp observation of domestic detail; -another is his keen awareness of how our cultural life intermingles with the quotidian reality of family routine." - The Australian
"You can't write better than this. It's simply perfect." - Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic, Eat Pray Love) on Gotham
Genre: Literary Fiction
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