Hush

by Anne Stone

A family is haunted by suffering, loss and pain in this poetic novel about the violence of patriarchy and possibilities of resistance in the lower townships of Anglo-Québec. Roses De'ath lives and works at the grungy local hotel in De'ath Sound, a town named for her mother — a continually hovering presence who has recently checked herself out of a sanitarium and is suffering a gradual loss of memory. The other inhabitants of De'ath Sound include August, Roses' stepfather and sometime lover; Loralie, the local prostitute, whose existence in this place is a failure to exist in any other place; Bat, a young man drawn into the incestuous loop of Roses' family; and Roses' biological father, the old man Potter — outcast because of his scaly bird leg. Driven to the unnerving reaches of language, informed by the fluidity of time and caprices of memory, rather than a linear plot, this rich novel exists at the intersection of the body, language and self. Anne Stone has created a wrenching portrait of the murky vision and dulled sense that is the price paid for secrets and deceptions, and the exhausting effort of burying tremendous pain throughout generations.

150 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Anne Stone teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Capilano University. Her latest novel, Girl Minus X (Fall 2020), tells the story of a girl with an eidetic memory and a traumatic past, navigating a world in which a slow creeping virus erodes memory. Publishers Weekly called the novel “a prismatic look at disaster striking people already in crisis. Stone’s brilliant, breathless novel will put readers in mind of Emily St. John Mandel and Margaret Atwood.” She’s also the author of the novels, Delible (2007), Hush (1999), and jacks (1998). Just now, she’s working on a book of speculative / slipstream / Weird short stories.