11. On the surface, Blood Sports doesn’t seem to have much in common with most well-known Canadian novels – though Robinson says she’s a voracious reader of Canadian fiction. How is this book different from, and similar to, other Canadian novels you’ve read? Do you think that the concepts of CanLit, and of Canadian identity in general, are useful when discussing a work like this?
12. In interviews, Robinson has mentioned that she watches a lot of movies, and that she’s been influenced somewhat by contemporary directors like David Cronenberg. In what ways, if any, do you see the influence of film in Blood Sports? Conversely, in what ways is Blood Sports distinctively bookish and un-movie-like? Could a story like this ever be filmed?
13. “Hate is everything they said it would be and it waits for you like an airbag.” Is the sentiment expressed in the novel’s epigraph (quoted from a book of stories by Canadian author Mark Anthony Jarman) confirmed by the story as a whole?
14. Blood Sports is a sequel to an earlier novella of Robinson’s, “Contact Sports,” which describes Tom, Jeremy, and some of the novel’s other characters at an earlier period in their lives. Recently, Robinson has said that she has considered writing yet another story about these characters. What might happen in a sequel to Blood Sports, and why do you think these particular characters hold so much allure for the author?
Eden Robinson is the author of two bestselling novels, Monkey Beach, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and a finalist for the 2000 Giller Prize, and Blood Sports. Her collection of stories, Traplines, was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book of the Year.
Robinson is a Haisla woman who was raised and now lives in Kitamaat Village, British Columbia.
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