Winner, 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Fiction
Finalist, 2016 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
The stories in Specimen are a unique exploration of science and the
human heart; the place where physical reality collides with our
spiritual and emotional lives.
In "The Blood Keeper," a young academic travels to North Korea to work
on her dissertation and embarks on a dangerous affair. In "Mamochka,"
which was nominated for the 2012 Journey Prize, an archivist at the
Institute for Physics in Minsk, must come to terms with her daughter's
marriage to a Chinese man in Vancouver. In "Peptide P," scientists study
a disease that seems to affect children after they eat hotdogs. In "Side
Effects," a woman's personality is altered, and not necessarily for the
better, by botox injections. In "The Big One," a woman and her daughter
find themselves trapped in the rubble of an underground parking garage
after an earthquake.
Stylistically varied and with settings that range from North Korea and
Minsk to Vancouver and Gdansk, Kovalyova is daring and confident new
voice in Canadian fiction.