About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Atomic Storybook is a novel about a young painter named Owen who is regularly abducted by beings he calls "the space pricks." These otherworldly visitors perform experiments on him, befuddle him with an absurd riddle about the moon, and show him scenes from his previous lives - one as a 12th century English monk; in another he shares the ward with Albert Einstein's son, Eduard, in the Burghölzli mental hospital.
Through all of this, and his lengthy existential conversations with physics professor, Chesley Keeping, Owen comes to doubt the nature of everything around him - all that stuff most of us like to call "reality."
Atomic Storybook is a new novel from the author of Spat the Dummy. It's about the early years of Albert Einstein, an explosion on the moon, and a group of friends who feel like they are living in a long, strange dream. A delightful stew of lust, blood, ennui and physics, Atomic Storybook is also about living and dying in what is, undeniably, an illusion.
Praise for Atomic Storybook:
"Macdonald does an excellent job through multiple perspectives of keeping the reader on edge as to what is real and what is not. ... It's a barometer of excellent writing when a novel can get you to stop reading, causing you to daydream and get lost in one magnificently imagined scene." (The Winnipeg Review)
"The humour in Spat was dark, bloody, and laugh-out-loud funny and Storybook is even better. It is also a more thoughtful and emotionally nuanced book and makes the reader experience Macdonald's stated goal as an author to 'feel the shock of the future as it splashes over me like a bucket of ice water on a sunburn.' " (Cape Breton Post)
Praise for Ed's previous novel, Spat the Dummy::
"This novel is unforgettable both for its subject matter and its form of narration. The style is electrifying and there are images that will burn in the reader's mind forever. Ed Macdonald is a gripping writer." (Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief, winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award)
Contributor Notes
Ed Macdonald has written and produced many hours of television and has won three Gemini Awards for excellence in writing. He has been nominated numerous times. He has also won the prestigious Writers Guild of Canada Award and The Golden Sheaf Award. His novel Spat the Dummy was released in November of 2010 and was nominated for the QWF First Book award.
In 2001, his play Gemini opened at the 78th Street Theater Lab in New York and received great reviews, including a rave from The Village Voice. Gemini was later remounted by NBC in their showcase space, PSNBC. Since then, several of his plays including Mutant Sex Party, The Escape Artist, Erratica, and Titus Lucretius Carus have been produced by the New York theater troupe, The Drilling Company. Titus Lucretius Carus was nominated for the New York Innovative Theatre Award.
Ed lives in Toronto, Canada.
