Ottawa Book Award Winner

Eva picked up the Ottawa Book Award - fiction category - in October.

Jury Statement:

“A compelling and unique blend of fiction and memoir, Eva’s Threepenny Theatre explores the life of Steinmetz’s great-aunt Eva through her tumultuous childhood in Germany before the Second World War, to her involvement in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, to her life in post-war Berlin and her old age in Canada. In an extraordinary feat of form echoing content, the story is told in shards, like glass shattered during Kristellnacht. At times devastating and poignant, at times hilarious, this book is brilliant and profound.”

Finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award

Eva’s Threepenny Theatre is a finalist for the 2009 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Established in 1997, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize recognizes Canadian writers of exceptional talent for the year’s best novel or short story collection.

The other finalists are Nicole Brossard for Fences in Breathing, translated by Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood; Douglas Coupland for Generation A; Alice Munro for her short story collection Too Much Happiness; Annabel Lyon for The Golden Mean. For more information about the award, visit The Writers' Trust.

All of the 2009 finalists will read during the International Festival of Authors in Toronto on October 28, 2009. Tickets for the event can be purchased online through the IFOA website.The prize winner will be announced at the Writers' Trust Awards on November 24, 2009 at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto.

rob mclennan's 12 or 20 Questions

rob mclennan has posted 12 or 20 Questions: with Andrew Steinmetz on his blog. Below is an excerpt:

Q9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
A9 - Hold on to the boat.

Q13 - What was your most recent Hallowe'en costume?
A13 - Salman Rushdie.

Q16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A14 - Play attacking midfield for Arsenal FC alongside Arshavin and Fabregas.

Q18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
A18 - When you write you don’t have to open your mouth.

Had enough? NO, then go here.

Ottawa Book Awards

Eva is a finalist for the 2009 Ottawa Book Awards. Hurrah!

Montreal Review of Books

Mary Soderstrom reviews Eva in Montreal Review of Books.

This is a lovely book, with its thick, rich paper, its French flaps, and its bold red and black graphics. The book's physical appearance cries out for the reader to stop and take careful account of what is written in the pages.

Full review here.

Life is what happens when you read, Fiction is what happens when you write

Alex Good of Good Reports.net calls Eva's Threepenny Theatre 'a highly original reflection on memoir'.

One of the hallmarks of what's come to be known as literary postmodernism is the shift of attention away from texts as something made and onto the conditions of their making, emphasizing process over product. In some ways it's akin to the playwright Bertolt Brecht's goal of alienation, deliberately making the audience aware that what they are watching is something constructed by taking them behind the scenes or in some other way outside of their comfort zone. The goal? "To represent the familiar as unfamiliar." The method? "Estrangement, disharmony, detachment."

Which is one way of introducing Eva's Threepenny Theatre, a "fiction about memoir" wherein Andrew Steinmetz reflects upon the life of his great-aunt Eva and (though he fails to get equal billing in the title) grandfather Hermann Hans. Exactly how much of the story is fiction and how much memoir is impossible to say. Steinmetz inserts himself as a character into the narrative - sitting at a table with Eva and recording her voice on a tape recorder, digging into his own memory vault to bring the family chronicle up to date - but even here he doesn't tip his hand. Indeed as the book progresses it becomes harder to figure out who is supposed to be talking, as though the narrative's proscenium arch - Steinmetz's or "Steinmetz's" own point of view - had quietly dissolved.

Full review here.

The Canadian Jewish News

Here is an interview about the family as distinct society, Keat's idea of negative capability, and the author's 'crossed out Jewish origins'. Thanks to Nancy Wigston and The Canadian Jewish News.

CJN.: Was the real Eva a wild character?

Steinmetz: She was no WASP, let’s put it that way. Direct, irreverent, packed with real and put-on emotions, her humour came from the extravagant positions she would take. Her theatre training and love of exaggeration made sure she was the focus of attention. I got to know her first when I was 12 and she was in her 60s. She moved into our [Eastern Townships] summer house with at least five dogs. My Swedish grandparents were already living there. They had a whippet – we had two dogs and a cat. On weekends, it was mayhem. I loved that atmosphere.

Eva never stopped telling stories. I picked up on her European sensibility – apparent in her tastes and habits: goose fat, Russian rye, garlic, wine, cigarettes. I didn’t grow up feeling very Canadian. Canadians ate hot dogs, we didn’t. Whatever Eva was,wherever she came from, I liked that place. I felt comfortable dreaming about it.

Full interview here.