ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many, many thanks: Michael Holmes and everyone at ECW Press, Martha Webb, Anne McDermid, and everyone at McDermid Ltd., the incomparable Gary Taxali, Emily Schultz, Rachel Heinrichs, Emily Donaldson, the Ontario Arts Council, Wolsak & Wynn, Tightrope Books, everyone at Quill & Quire, Eileen DeCourcy, Vera Beletzan, Antanas Sileika, Andrew Pyper, Priscila Uppal, Alex Lukashevsky, Paul and Mary Lou Strimas, Ken and Verlie Whitlock. Rest in peace, Bates Strimas.
All my love and everything else: Iago, Olive, and Lou.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATHAN WHITLOCK’s award-winning fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post, Toronto Life, Report on Business, Flare, Fashion, Geist, Maisonneuve, and Best Canadian Essays. He is a contributing editor for Quill & Quire. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.
TRY ANOTHER GREAT READ FROM ECW PRESS...
On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light From the acclaimed author of Lemon comes a clever and heartbreaking new novel of love and revelation
Harriet is 11 going on 30. Her mixed-media art is a source of wonder to her younger brother, Irwin, but an unmitigated horror to the panoply of insufficiently grown-up grown-ups who surround her. She plans to run away to Algonquin Park, hole up in a cabin like Tom Thomson and paint trees; and so, to fund her escape, she runs errands for the seniors who inhabit the Shangrila, the decrepit apartment building that houses her fractured family.
Determined, resourceful, and a little reckless, Harriet tries to navigate the clueless adults around her, dumpster dives for the flotsam and jetsam that fuels her art, and attempts to fathom her complicated feelings for Irwin, who suffers from hydrocephalus. On the other hand, Irwin’s love for Harriet is not conflicted at all. She’s his compass. But Irwin himself must untangle the web of the human heart.
Masterful and piercingly funny, Strube is at the top of her considerable form in this deliciously subversive story of love and revelation.
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Copyright © Nathan Whitlock, 2016
Published by ECW Press
665 Gerrard Street East
Toronto, ON M4M 1Y2
416-694-3348
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Whitlock, Nathan, author
Congratulations on everything / Nathan Whitlock.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-290-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-77090-857-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-77090-858-1 (ePub)
I. Title.
PS8645.H566C65 2016 C813’.6 C2015-907295-6
C2015-907296-4
Editor for the press: Michael Holmes | a misFit book
Cover illustration and design: Gary Taxali
Author photo: Iago McEvenue
The publication of Congratulations On Everything has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Congratulations On Everything Page 28
