Description
Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award (Publishing Triangle)
Ivan E. Coyote has developed a reputation as one of North America's most disarming storytellers; their tales of life on the roads and trails of the North as well as rural America are rich in their plainspoken, honest truths. In Loose End, their third story collection, Ivan focuses attention on the city: urban life, specifically in the East End of Vancouver, a diverse neighborhood of all types--old, young, gay, straight, white, black, Asian--communing at local coffee bars over hot rods, the art of skinny-dipping, and changes in the weather. Ivan presides over this circus of activities with their cool gaze, whether it's trying to impress the woman with the hot tub next door, or showing their mother how to use a cordless drill.
Ivan's world is the world of being out and open and unafraid; it's also a world in which no ghettos--racial, cultural, or defined by sexuality or gender--exist. With the calm, observant eye of a master storyteller, Ivan E. Coyote shows us how to break free of the rigors of authority and be true to ourselves, warts and all.
Awards
- Short-listed, Publishing Triangle Ferro-Grumley Award 2006
Reviews
Some of the most touching and funniest stories deal with the complications of living, as the author does, on the borders of established gender roles. Others simply observe the world, reminding us that the wonderful, the magical, can be found in small things. -GLBTRT Newsletter, American Library Association
Coyote is to CanLit what KD Lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture. -Ottawa XPress
Ivan's genius here, as always, is in the composition of a story--like a most accomplished photographer, he knows exactly what to let into the frame and what to crop out, where to center the image and how to pull the most interesting elements into the foreground. Many of the stories in the collection are moments or stories that could happen to anyone, but it takes the miraculous skill of an Ivan Coyote to turn those rough, muddy bits into the collection of jewels in Loose End. -gendercrash. com
[Ivan E. Coyote] is a remarkable storyteller. ... Loose End is like Narnia for the bent. To read it is to open a secret passageway into a world that is, well, open. ... This is Coyote's strongest work to date. -Herizons
With stirring emotional simplicity Coyote lays out adroit observations of fellow denizens. ..virtually every one of the book's 48 pieces registers strongly. -The Vancouver Review