Tunnel Island: Stories

Author: Bill Gaston
ISBN: 9781771872683 Category: Fiction Tags: , , ,
Publication Date: 29 April, 2025
Dimensions: 2.17 x 3.35"

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 unfold over a period of ten years, featuring a cast of characters striving to understand and overcome pasts that often include a catastrophic error: on Tunnel Island, moral misjudgements, semi-legal schemes, and antisocial gaffes abound.

Jack ekes out a living doing odd jobs and minding the beautiful houses of absentee owners, until he takes a lover’s bad advice and rents them out on Airbnb. A dying woman retains her wry sense of Wiccan humour while lovingly ministered to by her partner—in between his trips to hand out Halloween candy to the goblins at their door. A gruff-bordering-on-abusive uncle persuades his nephew to help him catch the otter hunting his koi. The almost mystical disappearance of a toddler is revisited years later when her parents remarry in a surreal outdoor ceremony.

These islanders are loners—not always by choice—though sometimes their disconnectedness is alleviated by a wedding or a Christmas dinner or a night at the pub. Highly original and empathetic, Tunnel Island is electrified by dark undercurrents that jolt and illuminate by turns. Bill Gaston’s big-hearted vision of life on a heavily forested island off the BC coast 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

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