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Title details for A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter - Wait list

A Grandmother Begins the Story

A Novel

by Michelle Porter
ebook
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
National Bestseller
Winner of the 2024 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
Finalist for the 2023 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize
Five generations of Métis women argue, dance, struggle, laugh, love, and tell the stories that will sing their family, and perhaps the land itself, into healing in this brilliantly original debut novel.
Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means.
Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother.
Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife.
Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without.
And Mamé, in the Afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her; she must find a way to loose herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward.
This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 9, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780735245389

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780735245389
      • File size: 4709 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 2, 2023
      Memoirist Porter (Scratching River) imbues her well-crafted debut novel with her Métis culture’s storytelling traditions. Among the many characters who narrate are the spirit of matriarch Mamé, who’s having trouble getting settled in the afterlife; her octogenarian daughter Geneviéve, finally dealing with her alcoholism; Carter, Geneviéve’s great-granddaughter, a young woman who was given up for adoption as a baby and is now coming to terms with being Métis and getting to know her biological mother and grandmother; Dee, a young bison who ignores her elders as she searches for the male bison that fathered her calf; and Bets, Geneviéve’s car, who cares for Geneviéve as they drive to a rehab facility. The author juggles the myriad story lines with élan, touching on family relationships in the human and animal world, the pull of the living on the spirits of the dead, and the stories and songs passed down from generation to generation. This brings a web of interconnected voices to vivid life.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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