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
Winner, the CAA Fred Kerner Book Award. Del Hanks is on the verge of academic tenure, but at forty she's also perched on the precipice of either the beginning or the end of the rest of her life.
Black Star is a dark comedy, both bitingly funny and transgressive, an unflinching and unsentimental exploration of the female experience, academia, and the idea of power that burns in the mind as white as acid. Medved's new novel is a searing critique of a world we all know too well, one of sexual exploitation, manipulation, and the subtle machinations of power that Black Star filters through the lens of academia. It is at once poetic, tragic, disturbing and funny.
PRAISE FOR BLACK STAR: "A "hideous narrative" about bad behaviour, Black Star elicits frequent guffaws. Philosopher-fools, what's not to like?" (Toronto Star)
"The scholarly life has lent itself to fiction and satire for decades now (centuries, if you want to go back to Chaucer). ... Delorosa Hanks, the chaotic narrator of Black Star, is the latest heir in this line. By the second sentence of the scalding new novel by Vancouver author Maureen Medved, Hanks is referring to her academic rival as 'a lesion of carcinogenic proportions capable of rotting and destroying departments'. It just gets darker, funnier, and more acidic from there." (The Georgia Straight)
"Maureen Medved masterfully explores her protagonists in all their spangled, fallible glory. Black Star plunges the reader into frantic academic rivalry. Is it paranoia or master manipulation? Every twist and turn will lead you down Medved's darkly compelling rabbit hole." (Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster) "This wild novel is a powerful exploration of imposter syndrome taken to extremes and a story of how the sadistic, competitive world of academia intersects with one woman's unraveling sense of self. Suspenseful and beautifully written." (Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People, Giller Prize Finalist)
"You can read this slender swift novel as a comedy of manners, or a sly take on the corrosions of academe, but on its lower frequencies Maureen Medved's brilliant new book is about the death of dreams and our lost hold on truth and reality, an often funny but finally harrowing look at a dystopia that's come to reside in each of our souls." (Charles D'Ambrosio, author of Loitering)
Contributor Notes
Maureen Medved is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright as well as an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia. Her debut novel, The Tracey Fragments, was published by House of Anansi Press, and Maureen's screen adaptation (directed by Bruce MacDonald and starring Ellen Page) opened the Panorama program of the 57th annual Berlin International Film Festival and won the Manfred Salzgeber Prize. In 2009, Medved received the Artistic Achievement Award from Women in Film and Television, Vancouver. Medved lives in Vancouver and is currently completing a third novel.
Editorial Review
Praise for The Tracey Fragments, the film (script by Medved, based on her novel):
"A tough watch, but a rewarding one... " (The Toronto Star)
"Powerful... fierce, enigmatic and affecting." (The New York Times)
Praise for The Tracey Fragments, the book:
"Medved's debut novel provides an eerie glimpse of a raging adolescent psyche... skillfully blends Tracey's frenzied facts and fictions into a cohesive portrait of a teenager on the verge of imploding... a taut, harrowing narrative." (Publisher's Weekly)
"A high-octane jaunt through the remnants of a mind shattered by trauma." (The Globe and Mail)
"Tracey's voice is acerbic, funny and totally convincing. Anyone who has been or has known a bitter and confused teenager will know where she's coming from." (Toronto Star)
"Medved brilliantly conveys the rage and frustration of a self-conscious young girl... The effect is like digging through a box full of broken stained glass and finding an exquisite shard every time." (Vancouver Magazine)
