The Juliet Stories
Carrie Snyder
'a coming-of-age tale about the painful and wonderful experiences of motherhood... a compelling novel told in the most beautifully crafted way, and the frequent lapse into disjointed stream of consciousness renders the style close to that of Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. It is a wonderful rarity when a book leaves you so profoundly affected' - We Love This Book
Juliet Friesen is ten years old when her family moves to Nicaragua. It is 1984, the height of Nicaragua's post-revolutionary war, and the peace-activist Friesens have come to protest American involvement. In the midst of this tumult, Juliet's family lives outside of the boundaries of ordinary life. They've escaped, and the ordinary rules don't apply. Threat is pervasive, danger is real, but the extremity of the situation also produces a kind of euphoria, protecting Juliet's family from its own cracks and conflicts.
When Juliet's younger brother becomes sick with cancer, their adventure ends abruptly. The Friesens return to Canada only to find that their lives beyond Nicaragua have become the war zone.
One by one, they drift from each other, and Juliet grows to adulthood, pulled between her desire to live a free life like the one she remembers in Nicaragua, and her desire to build for her own children a life more settled than her parents could provide.
With laser-sharp prose and breathtaking insight, these stories herald Carrie Snyder as one of Canada's most prodigiously talented writers.
Product Details
About Carrie Snyder
Reviews for The Juliet Stories
We Love This Book
mature and powerful... Snyder maintains an engaging blog called Obscure CanLit Mama, but if there's any justice she'll soon have the option of dropping that first word
Montreal Gazette
well-crafted and imaginative... Snyder's tone and style is vivid and compelling
Globe and Mail
a moving story, beautifully told
Quill & Quire
Fans of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast will love this one
Chatelaine
excellent... Snyder has an uncanny ability to make the unfamiliar intensely knowable ... [The Juliet Stories is] pitted with a surplus of lovely land mines of revelation, aha moments exploding into wonderful, sometimes profoundly sad, insights
Telegraph Journal
subtle and deft
National Post (Canada)
Snyder is phenomenal here, crafting some of the most striking images and beautiful sentences that you will likely read all year. The Juliet Stories is not to be missed
Coast
sparkle[s] with nuance and thoughtfulness... engaging... terrific
Edmonton Journal
a stream of sensual imagery that grows more sophisticated with each page... The Juliet Stories highlights the lessons we learn in youth and with age, and the conflict between the freedom we value and the security we desperately need
Walrus Magazine
Similar to [Virginia] Woolf in style, Snyder's stream-of-consciousness prose gives the reader a view of Nicaragua from the inside... you may find yourself pleasantly challenged (and enchanted) by Snyder's impressionistic language and plot fragmented by time and geography
Winnipeg Review