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Bad Land

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

LONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE

The slow-burning, deeply felt story of a social outcast reckoning with the wounds of her past

Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez—a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak—upending Regina's quiet life.

It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through plains and mountains that forces Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.

Rife with gothic tension and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.

This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 29, 2024
      Chong (The Whole Animal) offers a muddled story of a loner and her troubled family. Thirty-something Regina lives alone in her childhood home in the badlands of Alberta, Canada. Her younger brother Ricky left home seven years earlier, and in the interim, Regina has spoken to no one and become dangerously overweight. When Ricky shows up with his six-year-old daughter, Jez, he refuses to explain their sudden appearance and the absence of Clara, his wife and Jez’s mother. Regina assumes the pair are on the run, and she gives them refuge, hoping to form a meaningful relationship with Jez. When Jez squeezes Regina’s pet rabbit too tightly, knocking the wind out of him, Regina slaps her on the forearm. The episode causes Regina to confront the long history of violence in their family, including her mother’s abuse, and these details reverberate when Chong reveals why Ricky and Jez fled from their home. Unfortunately, the meditation on generational trauma is obscured by underdeveloped characterizations, particularly of Regina, whose extreme isolation and obesity feel a bit exploitive in the absence of deeper insights. It’s a letdown. Agents: Marilyn Biderman and Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Agency.

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Languages

  • English

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