Praise for The Widows
"Engagingly written."--Canadian Literature
"A comic novel . . . [with] a happy and delicious ending."--Quill &
Quire
Praise for Moon Honey
"Mayr skewers her characters mercilessly and mixes references . . . with
a giddy eclecticism."--Canadian Forum
"An exciting literary journey . . . a powerful and compelling
debut."--Calgary Herald
High school reunions can be hell. But when you throw in racial and
sexual tensions, extramarital affairs and cannibalistic, undead
vegetarians, it's hell times infinity.
Brash, clever and monstrously funny, Venous Hum charts the lives of
Lai Fun Kugelheim and Stefanja Dumanowski, best friends who, upon
hearing the news of an old high school acquaintance's death, are gripped
by an insatiable nostalgia and organize a 20-year reunion. What
initially seemed like a simple task becomes increasingly complicated for
Lai Fun, but the past is nothing compared to her messy present: Her
marriage to a successful businesswoman is crumbling, she's having an
affair with a man (who happens to be Stefanja's husband) and her oddly
supernatural mother--an immigrant vegetarian with an unusual
appetite--only wants her daughter to be happy. But in the wake of such
chaos, the only constant is the hum of the blood coursing through her
veins.
A satire on race, gender, sexual preference and vegetarianism, this is a
magic-realist novel that will throw your assumptions of the world and
the people who inhabit it out the window. It's the exclamation mark at
the end of the sentence that announces the end of literary fiction as we
know it and the beginning of something entirely new.
