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Ravenna Gets
Fiction. Winner of the 2011 ReLit Award (Canada) From the author of Pontypool Changes Everything , RAVENNA GETS is a new collection of "wheeled" stories that continue the author's exploration of "apocalypse fiction."
In a single convulsion of homicide, the population of Ravenna tries to erase the population of Collingwood. The innocent, standing in their living rooms, cooking in their kitchens, and playing in their yards, are simply checked off by hunting rifles or crossed out by farmers' tools.
"Tony Burgess sits in infinite judgement on rural Ontario life, insisting with infuriating calmness that not even one fine red curly hair separates the poetry of mundane existence from sudden, inexplicable violence. RAVENNA GETS belongs on the same shelf as Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip and Springsteen's Nebraska—Darren Wershler, author of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg , and with Bill Kennedy, Update
"...out on the edge and experimental to the point of reader- confusion, but surprisingly alluring. When taking a reader to the cliff edge, then the writing must be as enticing as chocolate even if the story smells bad. I don't get it and I didn't enjoy it, but I couldn't look This poetic, fast-flying nihilistic narrative of carnage is well done."— The Globe & Mail
"The world of Tony Burgess is savage and blackly funny. After all, he wrote the CanLit zombie classic Pontypoool Changes Everything . It's a place where you shouldn't trust anybody, not even your narrator. This is not Alice Munro's small-town Canada. Burgess rips open the guts of Canadian literature, someone's got to do it."— Uptown Magazine
In a single convulsion of homicide, the population of Ravenna tries to erase the population of Collingwood. The innocent, standing in their living rooms, cooking in their kitchens, and playing in their yards, are simply checked off by hunting rifles or crossed out by farmers' tools.
"Tony Burgess sits in infinite judgement on rural Ontario life, insisting with infuriating calmness that not even one fine red curly hair separates the poetry of mundane existence from sudden, inexplicable violence. RAVENNA GETS belongs on the same shelf as Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip and Springsteen's Nebraska—Darren Wershler, author of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg , and with Bill Kennedy, Update
"...out on the edge and experimental to the point of reader- confusion, but surprisingly alluring. When taking a reader to the cliff edge, then the writing must be as enticing as chocolate even if the story smells bad. I don't get it and I didn't enjoy it, but I couldn't look This poetic, fast-flying nihilistic narrative of carnage is well done."— The Globe & Mail
"The world of Tony Burgess is savage and blackly funny. After all, he wrote the CanLit zombie classic Pontypoool Changes Everything . It's a place where you shouldn't trust anybody, not even your narrator. This is not Alice Munro's small-town Canada. Burgess rips open the guts of Canadian literature, someone's got to do it."— Uptown Magazine
91 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Tony Burgess
35 books112 followersTony Burgess is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His most notable works include the 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything and the screenplay for the film adaptation of that same novel, "Pontypool" (2008).
Burgess’ unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as ”blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock.
Burgess’ unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as ”blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 27, 2019
oh god tony burgess, you are such a sick fuck.
i am terrified of tony burgess, i really am.
this book in particular is such a barrage of bloodshed and senseless brutality. he claims to have intended it as a commentary on war - on regular people getting caught in the crossfire of violence as collateral damage, but this explanation is not comforting if you are just reading this book without that knowledge.
it is a series of short stories, taking place in the same ontario neighborhood, in which people die. people die in explosions of blood. fountains of it. people standing in their living rooms, walking on the street, living their lives.
no one here gets out alive.
the best story, to my mind, is 102 mcallister street, in which a mother and son watch the film hostel together. "the first half is sex, the second half is torture." this character's very apt description of the movie becomes an appropriate description of the story, as well. (if surreptitious masturbation counts as "sex." i think it does.)
i read this right before bed last night because i didn't want to finish the book i was almost finished, leaving me stranded on the subway with nothing to read, but it may have been the wrong thing to read right before bed. technicolor nightmares, my friends...
but i like nightmares.
come to my blog!
i am terrified of tony burgess, i really am.
this book in particular is such a barrage of bloodshed and senseless brutality. he claims to have intended it as a commentary on war - on regular people getting caught in the crossfire of violence as collateral damage, but this explanation is not comforting if you are just reading this book without that knowledge.
it is a series of short stories, taking place in the same ontario neighborhood, in which people die. people die in explosions of blood. fountains of it. people standing in their living rooms, walking on the street, living their lives.
no one here gets out alive.
the best story, to my mind, is 102 mcallister street, in which a mother and son watch the film hostel together. "the first half is sex, the second half is torture." this character's very apt description of the movie becomes an appropriate description of the story, as well. (if surreptitious masturbation counts as "sex." i think it does.)
i read this right before bed last night because i didn't want to finish the book i was almost finished, leaving me stranded on the subway with nothing to read, but it may have been the wrong thing to read right before bed. technicolor nightmares, my friends...
but i like nightmares.
come to my blog!
October 9, 2013
tribe wipes out tribe in Rwanda, Nigeria, elsewhere. entire villages are mysteriously decimated in Peru, Algeria, elsewhere. neighbors slaughter neighbors in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. in Canada, the residents of the small town of Ravenna decide to massacre the residents of the equally small town of Collingwood. the first victims that we see: a mother caring for her sick child.
why? can there ever really be a reason for such things? a reason that makes sense, a reasonable reason, an explanation for atrocity? it is hard to imagine that reason.
but I'm not buying it. I think the novella is more about Burgess' feelings about the senselessness of certain kinds of lives, the lives of people he scorns, condescends to, holds in contempt.
the author is a very talented writer, there is no doubt of that. he creates these miniature portraits of different individuals, full of a certain kind of nuance, with prose that is by turns sharp and dreamy. and then he slaughters those individuals. every character amounts to a cameo appearance. there are two chapters in particular that stood out for me - both detailing the warped perceptions of the killers from Ravenna - that illustrate how Burgess has talent to burn. mesmerizing prose in those two parts. overall the writing is excellent, from beginning to end.
but here's the thing: don't pretend to be writing some statement on the senseless violence of war when your characters are people you hold at arm's length, small town people that you clearly view as pathetic, people who live lives that you consider worthless. because then you are not making a point about war. you are making a point about you, about how you view the world and the people in it. whether you realize it or not.
why? can there ever really be a reason for such things? a reason that makes sense, a reasonable reason, an explanation for atrocity? it is hard to imagine that reason.
"Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching's is bluekaren wrote that Burgess claims this book is a commentary on war. I believe it. or rather, I believe he believes it. at some point in the story, the war analogy becomes clear - although not obvious. but when my mind was trying to figure out the Why of it all, that was the first thing that struck me. a metaphor for the randomness, the senselessness of life and death in war. okay.
They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names
Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside
Whistling tunes we're kissing baboons in the jungle
It's a knockout
If looks could kill they probably will
In games without frontiers - wars without tears
If looks could kill they probably will
In games without frontiers"
but I'm not buying it. I think the novella is more about Burgess' feelings about the senselessness of certain kinds of lives, the lives of people he scorns, condescends to, holds in contempt.
the author is a very talented writer, there is no doubt of that. he creates these miniature portraits of different individuals, full of a certain kind of nuance, with prose that is by turns sharp and dreamy. and then he slaughters those individuals. every character amounts to a cameo appearance. there are two chapters in particular that stood out for me - both detailing the warped perceptions of the killers from Ravenna - that illustrate how Burgess has talent to burn. mesmerizing prose in those two parts. overall the writing is excellent, from beginning to end.
but here's the thing: don't pretend to be writing some statement on the senseless violence of war when your characters are people you hold at arm's length, small town people that you clearly view as pathetic, people who live lives that you consider worthless. because then you are not making a point about war. you are making a point about you, about how you view the world and the people in it. whether you realize it or not.
June 16, 2014
This is such a prettily designed little book of sudden appalling death, exploding skulls, pitchforks in legs and geysers of viscera incarnadine that I just had to take a step back. Anvil Press of Vancouver are probably not expecting to sell millions of this book, all due respect, yet they make it look great, feel great, they use quality paper and they include lots of gorgeous grungy photos throughout. Meanwhile, the latest Stephen King comes out with a crap cover and looks and feels like any other indistinguishable unit of production. I enjoyed SK's 700 page monster and Tony Burgess's 91-page sliver but I know which one I'm going to keep on my shelves. Let's hear it for small publishers. They've got soul.
Well, I say I enjoyed this, but maybe not quite the right word. This is an early Cronenberg movie like Shivers or Rabid, or maybe Romero's The Crazies, rewritten in an amphetamine rush by someone overdosing on Omensetter's Luck, Annie Proulx and 30 modern poets who I don't know because I never read modern poetry.
The face is what Joseph expects. Roman numerals on the hour marker and a complete non-numerated minute track. It is framed in a hinge brass bezel that sits snugly in a wood bezel. Beneath this he sees less. The pendulum assembly with its brass manta, stops, and springs. He is aware of the mighty and gold lenticular bob as it is, a genital to say and a genital to watch.
Page 58
Genital?
One review on GR says that this was a bad book because all the chapters are the same – a bunch of random people are in their houses or somewhere and a bunch of random people come up and slaughter them. This is like complaining that Dracula has too many vampires in it. Also, moaning that you never get to find out why the entire population of the small rural Canadian town of Ravenna wishes to slaughter by all possible means the entire population of the small rural Canadian town of Collingswood is not the point. Or the point is that there is no point. As Van Morrison says in one of his most philosophically profound songs, "there's no why, there just is".
The light in the room has shifted, the sun is going down. The top of the compost pile will know this, but further down, there may be no evidence of nightfall whatsoever. Here things are combined, here microbial night is the same march of heat as the day. Heat generated by the mouths of billions of things and their bright haunches bearing down to fecalize a thick, wet bottomless world. A world as vast and airless inside as it is across its face and even out from itself, everything, lightless and touching, a solid contiguity of inside and outside, of trace and deep heart. Purple beets are at home here. Heavy smouldering soups. Lettuce fance and frilly raspberries are now heavy snot mines. A magic tinsel interior.
Haunches?
Well, I will be so bold as to say that you don't get that kind of stuff in most horror novels. And yes, I might say to Tony Burgess that he can get awfully high falutin just before a slug rips someone's abdomen in two. His trick is a familiar avanty-gardy one of giving you the intimate details of a scene but withholding the context so you're always scrabbling around to figure out what's happening, where we are now, and who are these people. But now I'm starting to complain about vampires in Dracula.
There's one chapter which is truly fantastic and is just a 5 page vignette called "The Entertainment District". It's impossible to figure out who is the first person voice, it's kind of like the voice of death itself if death was a ten year old girl, or something like that, I dunno, but it could be the most brilliant thing I read all year.
Very weird and pretty much wonderful.
Well, I say I enjoyed this, but maybe not quite the right word. This is an early Cronenberg movie like Shivers or Rabid, or maybe Romero's The Crazies, rewritten in an amphetamine rush by someone overdosing on Omensetter's Luck, Annie Proulx and 30 modern poets who I don't know because I never read modern poetry.
The face is what Joseph expects. Roman numerals on the hour marker and a complete non-numerated minute track. It is framed in a hinge brass bezel that sits snugly in a wood bezel. Beneath this he sees less. The pendulum assembly with its brass manta, stops, and springs. He is aware of the mighty and gold lenticular bob as it is, a genital to say and a genital to watch.
Page 58
Genital?
One review on GR says that this was a bad book because all the chapters are the same – a bunch of random people are in their houses or somewhere and a bunch of random people come up and slaughter them. This is like complaining that Dracula has too many vampires in it. Also, moaning that you never get to find out why the entire population of the small rural Canadian town of Ravenna wishes to slaughter by all possible means the entire population of the small rural Canadian town of Collingswood is not the point. Or the point is that there is no point. As Van Morrison says in one of his most philosophically profound songs, "there's no why, there just is".
The light in the room has shifted, the sun is going down. The top of the compost pile will know this, but further down, there may be no evidence of nightfall whatsoever. Here things are combined, here microbial night is the same march of heat as the day. Heat generated by the mouths of billions of things and their bright haunches bearing down to fecalize a thick, wet bottomless world. A world as vast and airless inside as it is across its face and even out from itself, everything, lightless and touching, a solid contiguity of inside and outside, of trace and deep heart. Purple beets are at home here. Heavy smouldering soups. Lettuce fance and frilly raspberries are now heavy snot mines. A magic tinsel interior.
Haunches?
Well, I will be so bold as to say that you don't get that kind of stuff in most horror novels. And yes, I might say to Tony Burgess that he can get awfully high falutin just before a slug rips someone's abdomen in two. His trick is a familiar avanty-gardy one of giving you the intimate details of a scene but withholding the context so you're always scrabbling around to figure out what's happening, where we are now, and who are these people. But now I'm starting to complain about vampires in Dracula.
There's one chapter which is truly fantastic and is just a 5 page vignette called "The Entertainment District". It's impossible to figure out who is the first person voice, it's kind of like the voice of death itself if death was a ten year old girl, or something like that, I dunno, but it could be the most brilliant thing I read all year.
Very weird and pretty much wonderful.
February 25, 2012
This book is awesome. A town goes to war with another town. It is brutal and bewildering and beautifully pure in its crazed violence. I like this better than his novel Pontypool (from which the interesting and fun Zombie movie was made) and would LOVE to see a film of this.
Read
November 24, 2013I'm feel bad giving a one star review, but here's the format of this book: random scene, a bunch of people are violently murdered, cut to another random scene, more murder, etc. And that's it. Nothing else happens. I get that literature needs its extremes, from Chick Lit to this violent stuff, but there's no story telling here. There are no real characters. Just violent act after violent act and no matter how you wrap it up as "social commentary", this book is ultimately repetitive and there's no way I could recommend it to a friend.
Reading Ravenna Gets is like listening to the most "industrial" sounding Nine Inch Nails song over and over again for 3 hours.
Reading Ravenna Gets is like listening to the most "industrial" sounding Nine Inch Nails song over and over again for 3 hours.
July 24, 2011
I was so busy being disturbed while reading this book that I could barely pay attention to what it is about. I liked it, but also spent a few pages trying not to gag.
I'm not surprised that this is Canadian literature. The isolation and violence of small town Ontario is not only believable but needs no motivation.
I'm not surprised that this is Canadian literature. The isolation and violence of small town Ontario is not only believable but needs no motivation.
June 5, 2011
If you aren’t reading Tony Burgess, you are missing out on one of Canada’s best authors, period, not to mention some of the most gripping, experimental horror in the genre.
August 10, 2022
After the novelty of the first few chapters wore off, this novelette didn't do much for me.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews