Set on an island in BC’s Salish Sea, a richly imagined and often hilarious collection of linked stories by Bill Gaston, a master of the art of short fiction.
Eleven stories feature a cast of characters striving to overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error. On Tunnel Island, moral misjudgments, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound as characters seek a remedy for what ails them: loneliness, heartbreak, grief.
Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the estates of absent owners, until he takes a lover’s bad advice and rents their houses through Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry Wiccan sense of humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner — in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy at their door. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony.
Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston’s bighearted vision of life on a heavily forested island immerses readers in a world rendered tender and tolerable by human folly and our stumbling attempts at redemption.
About the Author
Bill Gaston is the author of seven novels and eight collections of short fiction, including Sex is Red and Mount Appetite, as well as a book of poems and two memoirs, most recently Just Let Me Look at You. His work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Giller Prize, among many other awards, and has won the Victoria/Butler Book Prize, the Writers’ Trust Timothy Findley Award (for a body of work, mid-career), the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction, and the National Post Book of the Year. He lives on Gabriola island Island with his wife, the author Dede Crane.
Reviews
“The immense pleasure that Tunnel Island gave me came from every possible source: from the lovingly described settings, the unexpected narrative turns, the supple sentences, the close observations . . . What a talent Bill Gaston is! What a master of the craft!”
—Barbara Gowdy, author of Little Sister and The White Bone
“Bill Gaston’s stories are as multifaceted and generous as the complicated, all-too-real characters at their heart. This is a wonderful book. Spend some time on Tunnel Island, and you’ll never want to leave.”
—Steven Price, author of Lampedusa and By Gaslight
“Gaston, one of Canada’s most respected writers, with multiple prize nominations and awards, renders the key dichotomies of human nature, and of life on the island – beauty and violence, trust and betrayal, isolation and community, joy and heartbreak – with a deceptive ease and deftness. The language of the stories is powerful and closely observed, but never overworked, the careful craft subsumed in service to the narrative itself.”
—Quill and Quire, see full review here
“These stories demand a second or even third reading as characters reappear, and some change over time. The gift of a small community is that everyone knows everyone; it’s also a bit of a curse. In Gaston’s hands, it’s mostly a gift as closeness seems to create a sense of balance.” —Candace Fertile, The British Columbia Review, see the full review here
“If you’re a reader looking for something offbeat but full of heart, go out and buy Tunnel Island. Bill Gaston will guide you into a mysterious and flawed community while demonstrating his deft handling of tone, perspective, and pacing.” —Brandon Fick, SaskBook Reviews, see the full review here
