Description:
Infused with humour and verve, yet full of warmth, Natalie Southworth's debut collection is a disquieting, soul-stirring portrait of female ambition, family fragility and dislocation.
In There's Always More to Say, girls and young women, on the road to middle age, contend with internal struggles--a daughter's disconnection from her spirituality-obsessed father, the pressure to succeed, the fear of coming undone, the loss of art--as they try to hold it together despite the demands and loneliness of modern life. Natalie Southworth's short stories have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the US, and the UK. They have won The Brighton Prize, placed third in The Moth Short Story Prize, and were finalists for The Fish Prize, The New Quarterly's Peter Hinchcliffe Award, and Prairie Fire's McNally Robinson Booksellers Short Fiction Contest.Review Quotes:
"This is a beautiful work. A lifetime is gathered in these elegant and deeply moving stories." --Madeleine Thien, author of The Book of Records
"In this assured debut, Southworth's affecting stories give shape to the inarticulable." --Winnipeg Free Press "A formidable debut collection." --Montreal Review of Books "The collection announces an exciting and fresh, yet mature and fearless voice." --The New Quarterly "An unflinching debut collection." --The Literary Review of Canada "This collection will fit well on your bookshelf tucked between the works of Mavis Gallant and Carol Shields. Southworth demonstrates a measured and skillful hand, weaving together nuanced, deep characters and the trials they must endure together. There's Always More to Say is a rewarding read and a brilliant debut for Southworth." --The Miramichi Reader "Astute, puncturing observational storytelling." --BC Review "Engaging, stimulating and insightful. A marvellous debut!" --Ottawa Review of Books "Reading this book was an immersive experience that carried me back to memories of being a child and then a teenager, caught in others' decisions while yearning for an adult's powers to move through our complicated world." --The Seaboard Review "They are beautiful and shimmering stories, with so much subtlety and nuance--the tension and unease are palpable yet mostly under the surface. I picture them as Chagall paintings--beautiful constellations of images and ideas. There's a great deal of wisdom here about the lives of women and a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality." --Alix Ohlin, two-time Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Dual Citizens "I was a convert to Natalie Southworth's fiction from the first story I read. This book is ambitious, deeply intelligent, and psychologically fearless. Natalie Southworth has a surgical eye for a specific species of suffering: the kind that comes as the cost of what we'd thought we wanted." --Paige Cooper, author of Zolitude "Natalie Southworth's stories--crisp, sometimes funny, lovely in their detail--always drive to their emotional heart. These are adventures among baffled parents, a tumult of teens, and the aged clinging to shreds of meaning. All of them brilliantly performed, all memorable." --John Metcalf, writer and distinguished editor "Her gaze is unwavering. Natalie Southworth conveys the world with pellucid grace." --Claire Holden Rothman, author of Lear's Shadow