Publisher's Synopsis
"Nightsong" is a lyrical chapter, reminiscent of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, swooping down from the wider view of Wigford to the particular details of its inhabitants' dreams, secret hopes, and disappointments. These characters and their stories will linger with readers." Publishers Weekly, September 2016
"a great writer" -Daniel Lanois
"one of the finest songwriters on the planet... his lyrics [are] every bit as powerful as the best Dylan, Cohen and Lennon combined." -Ron Sexsmith
"a national treasure" -Michael Barclay, Exclaim
"he's a stone genius" -CBC
"Kyp Harness scrapes at the backdrop of reality to reveal the tired, the broken, the lost and desolate, imbuing their agony with a fine and desperate dignity and allowing the reader to be swept along as well."
-Mike Blouin, award-winning author of Chase and Haven
"Kyp Harness' prose has a unique flow: word and action, thought and thing are all contiguous and combined in lovely braided sentences. There's some Joyce splashed around Wigford, a satisfying read. This is a fantastic book, please just read it." -Tony Burgess, author of Idaho Winter, finalist for the Trillium Award and author of Pontypool Changes Everything
Wigford is a small town in rural Southwestern Ontario, home to a cast of recurring characters: Buzz, a drunk-driving father of two; his wife, who should have married Bert Walmsley instead; Happy Henry, a devout, socially inept apostle who loves to play the organ; Elmer, a stroke survivor.
Wigford Rememberies tells this community's stories through an impressionistic series of vignettes. The language is inventive, innovative and exciting, and whether describing mucking out the pig barn--"there in the dust and the sweet smells of grain and straw and the heavy brown odour of shit so strong it makes you sneeze"--or helping a drunk articulate how to manipulate God's forgiveness--"'if I gave my heart to Jesus--right there on my deathbed the minute before I died--he'd forgive everything an I'd go up into Heaven and be saved just as much as the other guy who never did nothin' wrong at all with no difference?'"--Harness wields words with an eye for detail, musicality and style.
Visceral, reflective and lyrical, Wigford Rememberies is a poetic evocation of mood and epiphanic realizations, and will resonate with anyone who has ever confronted suffering, love or the unknowable.
