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More Local books. |
Books by David HelwigBorn in Toronto in 1938, David Helwig attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first stories were published in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer while he was still an undergraduate. He then went on to teach at Queen's University. He worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, rubbing elbows with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs and Timothy Findley. While at Queen's University, Helwig did some informal teaching in Collin's Bay Penitentiary and subsequently wrote A Book About Billie with a former inmate. Helwig has also served as literary manager of CBC Television Drama, working under John Hirsch, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers. In 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer. He has done a wide range of writing—fiction, poetry, essays—authoring more than twenty books. Helwig is also the founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. David Helwig lives on Prince Edward Island in the village of Eldon. He indulges his passion for vocal music by singing with choirs in Montreal, Kingston, Montreal and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's `Messiah', Bach's `St Matthew's Passion' and Mozart's `Requiem'. We are pleased to offer David Helwig's work here at the Reading Well. We also have a few copies of some of his out of print titles. Please email for titles and availability. |
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ISBN: 0-88984-247-7
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DuetWritten by David Helwig"Norma was grooming her wolf when the tenant arrived. She had bought a cheap hairbrush from the grocery store and she was brushing the hair of her new stuffed wolf, getting a lot of dust and dirt out of him. The creature was starting to look quite handsome, glass eyes wiped with spit and kleenex and now very bright. She looked toward her tenant, the putative murderer, who was coming toward her." ... Duet, a vivid and comic account of a stubbornly unromantic romance, is the story of Carman, a retired Toronto policeman, who takes to wandering in the wake of his wife's death. On a whim, he rents a cottage north of Kingston from Norma, the cantankerous proprietor of a rural junk-shop. Sex and death haunt the undergrowth as Carman and Norma grumble and feud, and against the grain of their bad temper begin to create a precarious friendship. Duet is a beautiful novella, but one without prettiness; David Helwig demonstrates a subtle sense of humanity through his creation of two of the prickliest customers in Canadian fiction. The people Helwig creates in Duet remind us that we've all met someone like them, in a place like this; maybe we even wondered what made them who they are, or appear to be. And although it's a great temptation to want the sparks to keep flying between Norma and Carman, we're glad of the unlikely harmonies found along the way. If there is a downside to this book, it's in the fact that we come to the end and can't help but wish we could remain with these folks a little longer. —Ingrid Ruthig, Books in Canada | ||||
ISBN: 0-88984-244-2
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Stand-inWritten by David HelwigDavid Helwig has written an engaging novella about a whimsical, opinionated and slightly embittered professor of humanities, now retired. The professor is asked, at the last minute, to fill in and deliver an important lecture series, replacing a famous friend and colleague who has suddenly died. The professor does agree but his impromptu talks - both amusing and reflective - combine memories of Paris, odd corners of art history, and the story of his own life with its links to Denman Tarrington, the deceased celebrity. As his talks continue, the professor's thoughts and ideas find their way into other possible worlds, following all the avenues through a house of mirrors. "... one of the mirrors caught me and showed me myself. As I looked, I thought about that old trick of exposition, found in bad fiction, where the main character looks in the mirror and the author is able to describe the long pale face.... A face that a woman, in the grip of whatever madness, once called beautiful.... The mirror gives us an author's eye view of ourselves." "The Stand-In is a comic gem, by turns mordant, witty and wise. It's a delicious novel of friendship, marriage, infidelity, and sly revenge. But it's also a fascinating meditation on irony, Dutch painting, mirrors, and the self. Helwig is a master of thematic interweaving. His timing is impeccable. One has the impression of a ferocious intelligence at play - the effect is gorgeous, seductive and compelling." —Douglas Glover | ||||
ISBN: 1894031849
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The Year OneWinner of the 2004 Atlantic Poetry Prize.Written by David HelwigIn 12 long poems, spanning January through December, David Helwig combines the gradually changing seasons with daily goings-on and memories. The Year One charts 12 months populated with birds, Shakespeare, kitchen utensils, foliage, slugs, dead poets, neighbours, weather and friends. He incorporates snatches of song, plays, dialogue and onomatopoeia to create distinct place and mood. Helwig has arrived at an unusual form that fuses the detail and scope of fiction with the musicality of lyric verse, showing a gift for characterizing time and place, fitting old memories into the present tense with ease. Demonstrating a distinctly Canadian fascination with weather, he expresses awe at the changing seasons, recalling winter storms in the height of summer, deliberating over times past whilst headily engaged in present surroundings. Throughout The Year One, Helwig suspends immediate and remote, present and past, individual and collective on the page together. Certain verses are as much about the process and mentality of describing as they are about the descriptions themselves. This creates a potency and level of comprehension for the reader that is at once tenuous and thoroughly engaging. Layered thick upon one another, these verses are both personal and universal. The collective effect of the whole is something like perusing a desk drawer in which grocery lists curl up next to dramatic monologues and old letters rest between the pages of this year's almanac. With this book, Helwig opens the drawer and invites us to join him as he sorts. | ||||
ISBN: 0864922868
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The Time of Her LifeWritten by David Helwig"...by remaining consistently true to point of view and technique, Helwig allows a portrait of a heroine to finally emerge. As Jean deals with successive losses, she becomes defined less and less by time and place and more by her capacity to register pain and suffering and to persevere in spite of life’s inevitable erasure. With this capacity, Jean assumes a larger and paradoxically enduring presence in our minds; her diminishing becomes Helwig’s resolute celebration of her having lived. Helwig’s accomplishment is the way he compels us to admire and mourn a woman whose inner depths are seldom revealed—indeed, for much of the novel, scarcely even entertained. —Eric Henderson Canadian Literature | ||||
ISBN: 0864922728
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Close to the Fire: A NovellaWritten by David HelwigSet in a snug country house in a wintry landscape in a place that could be Prince Edward Island, Close to the Fire is a winter's tale that warms the heart while gently chilling the blood. | ||||