Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be Hugh Garners best, most ambitious novel. Truly, in the person of Grace Hill, the landlady of the Toronto rooming house where most of the books events take place, Garner has created a fictional character never to be forgotten. Grace is a middle-aged snoop and an overweight nudist whose sexual release comes from watching wrestling matches at a hockey arena that is a thinly disguised Maple Leaf Gardens. Around Grace orbit her various boarders: alcoholic Gordon Lightfoot; Walter Fowler, an aspiring writer whose marriage has just broken up; Aline Garfield, a fundamentalist Christian grappling with various urges and torments; a Polish refugee woman; and a colourful cast of others whose lives intersect in drama that arises from arbitrary or coincidental encounters. According to scholar John Moss, the book is the best realistic novel of Canadian city life yet to be written.
Silence on the Shores depicts the final day in the life of a Maghrebian immigrant in France. Having crossed the Mediterranean to "the other shore" as a young man to find work, he ultimately remained in France, married a French woman, and broke the promise he made to his mother to return home one day. Aware that death is drawing close, he fears experiencing the ultimate form of exile: dying alone, with no fellow Muslim at his side to whisper the customary prayer for the dead in his ear. Le la Sebbar?s minimalist style deftly and powerfully conveys the simplicity of everyday life on both shores of the Mediterranean. Interweaving several monologues, she examines multiple facets of exile and the role of memory in easing its pain.
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Silence on the Shores depicts the final day in the life of a Maghrebian immigrant in France. Having crossed the Mediterranean to "the other shore" as a young man to find work, he ultimately remained in France, married a French woman, and broke the promise he made to his mother to return home one day. Aware that death is drawing close, he fears experiencing the ultimate form of exile: dying alone, with no fellow Muslim at his side to whisper the customary prayer for the dead in his ear. Le la Sebbar?s minimalist style deftly and powerfully conveys the simplicity of everyday life on both shores of the Mediterranean. Interweaving several monologues, she examines multiple facets of exile and the role of memory in easing its pain.
The definitive account of the lynching of twenty-three-year-old Matthew Williams in Maryland, the subsequent investigation, and the legacy of "modern-day" lynchings. On December 4, 1931, a mob of white men in Salisbury, Maryland, lynched and set ablaze a twenty-three-year-old Black man named Matthew Williams. His gruesome murder was part of a wave of silent white terrorism in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which exposed Black laborers to white rage in response to economic anxieties. For nearly a century, the lynching of Matthew Williams has lived in the shadows of the more well-known incidents of racial terror in the deep South, haunting both the Eastern Shore and the state of Maryland as a whole. In The Silent Shore, author Charles L. Chavis Jr. draws on his discovery of previously unreleased investigative documents to meticulously reconstruct the full story of one of the last lynchings in Maryland. Bringing the painful truth of anti-Black violence to light, Chavis breaks the silence that surrounded Williams's death. Though Maryland lacked the notoriety for racial violence of Alabama or Mississippi, he writes, it nonetheless was the site of at least 40 spectacle lynchings after the abolition of slavery in 1864. Families of lynching victims rarely obtained any form of actual justice, but Williams's death would have a curious afterlife: Maryland's politically ambitious governor Albert C. Ritchie would, in an attempt to position himself as a viable challenger to FDR, become one of the first governors in the United States to investigate the lynching death of a Black person. Ritchie tasked Patsy Johnson, a member of the Pinkerton detective agency and a former prizefighter, with going undercover in Salisbury and infiltrating the mob that murdered Williams. Johnson would eventually befriend a young local who admitted to participating in the lynching and who also named several local law enforcement officers as ringleaders. Despite this, a grand jury, after hearing 124 witness statements, declined to indict the perpetrators. But this denial of justice galvanized Governor Ritchie's Interracial Commission, which would become one of the pioneering forces in the early civil rights movement in Maryland. Complicating historical narratives associated with the history of lynching in the city of Salisbury, The Silent Shore explores the immediate and lingering effect of Williams's death on the politics of racism in the United States, the Black community in Salisbury, the broader Eastern Shore, the state of Maryland, and the legacy of "modern-day lynchings."
A mother and her two daughters spend a summer grappling with heartbreak, young love, and the weight of secrets in this “deeply felt family saga” (Entertainment Weekly) hailed as “one of the best beach reads of all time” (Today). Brian and Margot Dunne live year-round in Seaside, just steps away from the bustling boardwalk, with their daughters Liz and Evy. The Dunnes run a real estate company, making their living by quickly turning over rental houses for tourists. But the family’s future becomes precarious when Brian develops a brain tumor, transforming into an erratic version of himself. Amidst the chaos and new caretaking responsibilities, Liz still seeks out summer adventure and flirting with a guy she should know better than to pursue. Her younger sister Evy works in a candy shop, falls in love with her friend Olivia, and secretly adopts the persona of a middle-aged mom in an online support group, where she discovers her own mother’s vulnerable confessions. Meanwhile, Margot faces an impossible choice driven by grief, impulse, and the ways that small-town life has shaped her. Falling apart is not an option, but she can always pack up and leave the beach behind. “An emotional family drama...with endearing characters and deep insights” (Glamour), The Shore is a heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting novel infused with humor about finding sisterhood, friendship, and love in a time of crisis. This big-hearted novel examines the grit and hustle of running a small business in a tourist town, the ways we connect with strangers when our families can’t give us everything we need, and the comfort found in embracing the pleasures of youth while coping with unimaginable loss.
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “Heartfelt and heartening … a full-throated paean to the fundamental importance of nature in all its glory, fury and impermanence." —Wall Street Journal The incredible follow-up to the international bestseller The Salt Path, a story of finding your way back home. Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home. Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible. Now, life beyond The Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything. A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow. The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.
