Tilt - Alan Cumyn [64]
Something fell in the tiny space between their nose tips. A snowflake?
Hours could go by like this. Eternities. Just breathing the same air.
“Your mother must hate me,” she said.
“My mother has asked you to dinner,” he replied. “I have to warn you, the family is infested with liars and fools. But you have to come.”
She could . . . she could just stand there breathing and keeping her lips half a thought away. He leaned in slightly but got no closer.
“I’m not my father,” he said then.
She didn’t ask what he meant. They didn’t need to talk really. Slowly Stan began to get the sense that two people standing like this, so close together, with so much between them . . .
Maybe better not to say it. To just let the world fall to bits around them in the most delicious ways.
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa in the preparation of this manuscript. Thanks, too, to Shelley Tanaka for fitting both her considerable heart and head under her editorial hat in steering me through various drafts, and to my friends and colleagues at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, especially Louise Hawes, whose brilliant lecture on desire set this story in motion. Many thanks as well to publisher Patsy Aldana, my agent Ellen Levine and to other friends and family, whose comments and suggestions were so helpful.
About the Author
ALAN CUMYN is the author of many acclaimed novels for both children and adults. The Secret Life of Owen Skye won the Mr. Christie’s Award and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award and the Pacific Northwest Libraries Association Young Reader’s Choice Award. After Sylvia was nominated for the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and Dear Sylvia was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award. Alan is also a two-time winner of the Ottawa Book Award, and his novel The Famished Lover was longlisted for the Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Alan teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a past chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He lives in Ottawa.
About the Publisher
GROUNDWOOD BOOKS, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children’s books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.
Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.
We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.
Table of Contents
Cover
Openers
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher