This Lark of Stolen Time

Description

Lauder Jones and Mountcastle, two Halifax families both alike in dignity, linked by love and circumstance. Douglas Lauder Jones, obscure story writer, calls it “Life and No Escape.” His lovelorn son John thinks it’s the end of happiness. Neuroscientist Ursula Lauder Jones sees it as sink-or-swim parenting. Whatever it is, her daughter Merin, new owner of a movie house on Barrington Street, wants to sit through it twice. Her sister Anya, summer student working at Mountcastle Framing on Spring Garden Road, relishes life’s richly varied fabric. And the youngest, Cary, budding writer, recognizes it as apt material for the many stories stitching this novel’s intriguing brocade.

Advance Praise

“At the centre of this novel about love and belonging, Cumyn gives us a portrait of family and its familiar rhythms: dispersing and coming home again; together and then apart; in and out like breath. In prose that is warm and full of humour, This Lark of Stolen Time captures precisely the small moments of transformation that connect and help to define us.” – Ryan Turner, author of What We’re Made Of and Half-Sisters and Other Stories

“This is sly storytelling at its best. Playing with time and structure, Richard Cumyn’s head-hopping novel reads like cunningly connected stories that push the narrative towards a soaring epiphany. Each corresponding voice spreads its wings and brings the reader to the affecting reminder of stolen time.” – Lee Kvern, author of Afterall, The Matter of Sylvie, 7 Ways to Sunday, and the upcoming Catch You on the Flipside

“A collection of interconnected novellas just might be fiction’s most generous form: so many entrances, so many ways to come *in* to the story. Cumyn wastes no time on neat and far-too-tidy character and narrative arcs. Instead, he dances with characters the way Pollock danced with paint, creating dreamy yet connected—deeply connected—novellas. Connections forged, flubbed, and missed in the characters’ lives shine light on our own flaws, failures, and deep needs for love.” — Michelle Butler Hallett, author of Constant Nobody, winner of the Thomas Raddall Award for Atlantic Fiction, and This Marlowe.