Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada

by Lynn Coady

Edited by acclaimed novelist Lynn Coady, this anthology of new Atlantic Canadian fiction is named for the Victory Meat Market in downtown Fredricton, a place that features prominently in Rabindranath Maharaj’s fine story, “Bitches on All Sides.” This is the story of Ramjohn, the ultimate outsider -- a West Indian immigrant and lapsed Muslim who finds himself in a society where being “from away” is considered only a step or two above having been in prison.

This is a new kind of East Coast story, the kind celebrated in Victory Meat . The Maritime provinces are currently awash in great writing. Cities like Halifax and Saint John are humming with a revitalized sense of culture and possibility. Fiction writers like Newfoundland’s Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, and Michael Crummey, and Nova Scotia’s Carol Bruneau and Christy Ann Conlin have won rave reviews in literary circles by breaking with the stereotypes of East Coast literature. This collection of exciting writers and fresh new works will redefine what Atlantic writing searing, potent, unflinching in its depiction of the East Coast as it enters the twenty-first century as a hybrid of new and old, traditional and iconoclastic, Celtic and cosmopolitan.

Featuring works from well-known authors as well as relatively new voices, Victory New Fiction from Atlantic Canada is a showcase of the present, the multi-hued, multi-cultural fictional world of Atlantic Canada in all its gritty glory.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Lynn Coady is an award-winning author, editor, and journalist. Her previous novels include Saints of Big Harbour, which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail Top 100 book, and Mean Boy, a Globe and Mail Top 100 book. Her popular advice column, Group Therapy, runs weekly in the Globe and Mail. Coady is originally from Cape Breton Island, NS, and is now living in Edmonton, Alberta.

Reviews

[Jeff McLennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of contemporary Atlantic Canadian writers. Some weaker pieces but only a couple. Especially enjoyed the stories by Lisa Moore, Micheal Winter, and George Elliott Clarke.

[Nick Voro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: This review is not a true review. It is more of a summary composed of the author’s own words. Call it an enthusiastic proclamation. I leave reviewing to the real reviewers. I am simply sharing my enthusiasm for the work with this summary / prose collage.

*

The Whales by Lee D. Thompson

Not a dreamless sleep you are having now, are you? No, not at all. Sleep like death itself. Your eyes are open, but you wish to sleep some more. Entombed in a deep, dark grave. In your dreams, you dreamt of the ocean. Dreams of dark water, of liquid songs. Dreams where whales could be heard, taking leave of the heaving ocean. Their songs surrounded you and your family. Hear their songs for yourselves, winding down the streets on the wind from the bay. The songwhales’ wailsong. Their singing is on the wind and it seems so close. In my readerly ears and now yours. Let us be patient. Let us wait. And we can see them for ourselves. Glistening and rippled, undeniably beautiful and of spottled colours.

A brilliant story by a brilliant writer.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5