Confessions With Keith

Description

Winner of the 2023 City of Victoria Butler Book PrizeAn outrageously comic novel documents a middle-aged writer and mothers grappling with mid-life crisisher husbands and her own.Preoccupied with her fledgling literary career, intent on the all-consuming consolations of philosophy, and scrambling to meet the demands of her four children, the acutely myopic and chronically inattentive Vita Glass doesnt notice that her house and her marriage are competing to see which can fall apart fastest. Shecan barely find time for her writing career, and just when her newfound success in vegetable erotica is beginning to take off. Our heroines only tried and trusted escape is the blissful detachment of Keiths hairdressing salon, but when her husband leaves the country, unannounced, she decides to do likewisein the opposite direction, and with their children. Drawn from the pages of Vitas journal, this outrageously comic novel documents Vitas passage through a mid-life crisis and explores all the ways we deceive each other and ourselves.Praise forConfessions with KeithBridget Jones meets Nora Ephron in this diarized account of Vita, a woman dealing with an unexpected plot twist after 20 years of marriage.Globe and MailMagnetic artfully expressedfunny, honest, wry, intimateprivate thoughts On page after assured page, Vitas confounded, thrilled, irked, hurt, and enviousabout minutia as well as the big pictureand all of which are facets of what she terms the senselessness of human existence.The Vancouver SunSuccinct, cheeky prose Holdstocks fast-paced comic novel with its entertaining narrative will captivate readers, especially those who relish domestic tales.Winnipeg Free PressThings going wrong on many levels is the focus of the novel, but Vitas ability to plough through the problems and often see the humour even when exhausted is refreshing Confessions with Keithdeals with real life issues in a frenetic and funny manner.Candace Fertile,The BC ReviewA deftly crafted and wickedly fun read from cover to cover,Confessions with Keithby novelist Pauline Holdstock is the kind of story that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf.Midwest Book ReviewThis is a book about family, marriage, motherhood, and the importance of having a support network around you. I laughed, chuckled, and giggled my way through this book. And for that it gets 5 stars from me.Consumed By InkConfessions with Keithreminds us that life is a raw, radiant, and ridiculous story unfolding moment by moment for everyone in their separate subjectivities. It deserves laughter. It deserves tears. It is made more bearable by books like this, the literary equivalent of uncensored midnight conversation over cups of tea or glassespluralof wine.Amy Reiswig,Focus on VictoriaWith ample wit, Pauline Holdstock perfectly articulates the quiet sacrifice and crushing weight of keeping domestic order in the face of chaos.Confessions with Keithis not only a laugh-out-loud joy to read, but is bursting with incredible insight, and lends much-needed visibility to the inner life of a woman overlooked. A sheer delight of a book.Stacey May Fowles, co-editor ofGood Mom on PaperPraise for Pauline HoldstockHoldstock writes powerfully in Frankies voice, drawing readers into his internal life absorbing.Quill & QuirePauline Holdstock enchants with a spell of delectable storytelling the novels wonderment and delight in the possibilities of life is an effervescent tonic.Vancouver SunCaptivating An intriguing mystery The novel finds its way with charming intrigue and humour.Winnipeg Free PressHoldstocks writing moves seamlessly between her research and her polished storytelling of people, landscape and grief. These are familiar preoccupations, but she continues to make them compelling and rich.National PostPauline Holdstocks language is so powerful, her writing so wrought with emotion and beauty, that you become fully lost in her world.Winnipeg Review