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Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall
Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall | Suzette Mayr
23 posts | 5 read | 11 to read
Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job's finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. She's a little anxious, but a new floral blouse and her therapist's repeated assurance that she is the architect of her own life should fix that. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral, her backstabbing fellow professors, a cutthroat new dean - and the fact that the sentient and malevolent Crawley Hall has decided it wants them all out, and the hall and its hellish hares will stop at nothing to get rid of them.Like an unholy collision of Stoner, The Haunting of Hill House, Charlie Brown, and Alice in Wonderland, this audacious new novel by the Giller Prize-longlisted Suzette Mayr is a satire that takes the hallowed halls of the campus novel in fantastical - and unsettling - directions.Praise for Monoceros 'Monoceros is one of the most imaginative, quirky and emotionally devastating novels I've read in a long while.'- Globe and MailSuzette Mayr is the author of Venous Hum, The Widows, Moon Honey, and Monoceros, which won the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, the ReLit Award for Best Novel, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Mayr lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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Lindy
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Black Canadians, at the end of a recent Giller Power Panel, were asked to recommend lesser-known Black Canadian authors. I‘ve rounded up their suggestions in my most recent video: https://youtu.be/_TLS8M7OQGQ

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Bertha_Mason

"Leslie wears a knee-length coat, an elaborate, petally ruffle around the neck making her head look like a grumpy stamen."

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Bertha_Mason

""Fuck!" she hears. Then, "Fuckity fuck mcfuckintosh, oh fuckinstein van fucklington.""

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Bertha_Mason

Gawd, Edith's therapist is awful.

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Bertha_Mason

"Even though the thought of seeing Leslie is like contemplating a dirty toilet she's just about to lick, Edith is ready."

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Bertha_Mason

"Leslie's past devotion to Edith had deflated like a lung poked with a pencil, suddenly and irrevocably."
Today in odd similes.

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Bertha_Mason

I'm taking a break from Waste Tide, which has quite a lot of plot threads to follow, to read the tagged book, which sounds a little lighter. I'm excited about it!

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BookishTrish
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Big plans for December #TBR

CaroPi The Master and Margarita is one of my favorite books! Ever 4y
54 likes2 comments
review
CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian
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Mehso-so

What an odd little book this is. It's a bit horror, a lot bit satire, and a little slice of dystopian life of a current humanities academic. Edith Vane works at U of I and her job is supposed to be safe, what with tenure, but the new dean is evil, her colleague has gone mysteriously missing, and Crawley Hall, her building, seems to have developed sentience and is trying to kill everyone inside it. I admired but didn't always enjoy this novel.

charl08 I like the sound of this! 4y
CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian @charl08 I hope you read and like it! 4y
28 likes2 stack adds3 comments
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CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian
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Started reading this #queer #Canadian satire of academia with a touch of supernatural hauntedness on the ferry ride home this afternoon. So far it is definitely confirming my decision to leave academia many years ago. #QueerBooks

34 likes2 stack adds
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Lindy
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Tagged book is one of my rereads in June: it was chosen for one of my book clubs and it was a delight to revisit. The other three rereads were for Jenny's @readingenvy podcast, so you will have to be patient to hear about those, probably later this week.

TrishB Great stats 👍🏻 5y
kspenmoll So impressed! Happy reading! 5y
Lindy @TrishB Thanks! 5y
Lindy @kspenmoll ☺️ 5y
ReadingEnvy Soon, Tuesday! 5y
40 likes5 comments
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Lindy
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—My daughter the author, says her father. —I‘ve always had a book inside me. Just haven‘t had the time to write it. Maybe you could drive up next weekend and I could dictate while you type it out?

saresmoore Such a cute photo! 😍 5y
Lindy @saresmoore Thanks! I was trying my friend‘s retro wireless keyboard. Sometimes I get nostalgic about typewriters. 5y
readordierachel Great picture! And that keyboard looks really neat. 5y
Lindy @readordierachel Thanks! The keyboard is totally cool. 5y
51 likes4 comments
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Lindy
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Books litter part of the hallway, a pile collected against the wall opposite an open office door. A plant flies out of the door, spatters dirt against the wall, peppering the books.
—Fuuuuuuuck, she hears.
Then, —Fuckety fuck McFuckintosh O‘Fuckinstein vanFucklington!
The office belonged to Jack Froese. One of the creative writers.

readordierachel Ha! I'm gonna have to use some of those. 5y
Lindy @readordierachel Cuss word riffing. I like it. 5y
38 likes2 comments
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Lindy
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Edith tried to get a better chair from the faculty lounge and its collection of unused chairs, but the office administrator, Alice Z, caught Edith pushing the chair in transit between the lounge and her office and chided Edith—Edith needed to fill out the appropriate form, and the new chair should be in her office in six to eight months. Thirteen months ago.

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Lindy
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Yesterday was @LonesomeReader ‘s 40th birthday. @shawnmooney created a set of booktube tags to celebrate Eric‘s special day and I joined in via my book blog. Happy reading as you enter your fifth decade, Eric!

https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2018/09/happy-birthday-to-eric-karl-anderson.ht...

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Lindy
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#VWF2017 First event that I attended was Modern Satire with Suzette Mayr and Tom Perrotta. I learned that Mayr modelled her Edith Vane character on Eleanor Vance from The Haunting of Hill House.

LeahBergen I just saw Tom Perrotta here at Wordfest. 👍🏻 6y
Lindy @LeahBergen He's great onstage, isn't he? I haven't yet read any of his books but after hearing him read a section, I know I want more of 6y
44 likes2 comments
review
Lindy
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Pickpick

A lesbian Alice in Wonderland-ish spoof on the politics of academia, set in an invented university that could very well be Calgary—if the U of C had malevolent buildings infested with jackrabbits. Dark and funny. #LGBTQ #CanLit

Caryl This one sounds so good! 7y
shawnmooney Already stacked, but now given a Lindy-lift to way up nearer the top! 😍 7y
Lindy @shawnmooney Have you read any of her other books? This one is similar in tone and style to my favourite: 7y
See All 11 Comments
Lindy @Caryl I found it hard to capture its hilarious weirdness in quotes because the passages were too long for Litsy. Really enjoyed this book! 7y
shawnmooney No, I've only heard about this book. I'll start with that and if it all goes well I'll investigate further! Thank you! 7y
Lindy @shawnmooney See if you can find a preview of her writing; you should be able to tell pretty quickly if her style is for you. I'm afraid there may be too much fantastical elements mixed in with the contemporary realism for your taste. 7y
shawnmooney Shall do! 7y
LeahBergen I read (and enjoyed) 7y
Lindy @LeahBergen Me too. She has such a dark, dry wit. 7y
autumnlupin This is on my list because she's Calgarian, but your description just makes me want to read it more! 7y
Lindy @autumnlupin Excellent! 😊 7y
41 likes4 stack adds11 comments
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Lindy
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She extracts her red pen from her purse and slowly begins scribbling and ticking her way through the wildly ungrammatical pages, miles of faulty logic, the written-the-midnight-before wool gatherings.
Soon she is a marking powerhouse, she has graded 17 essays in 15 minutes, she is a marking automaton. She should grade papers at 3 in the morning every single day! Her mind vinegar-sharp, a slayer of dangling, squinting and misplaced modifiers.

Lindy @mom2bugnbee Here's another one for you. 😉 7y
merelybookish Marking 17 papers in 15 minutes. This has to be a fantasy! ☺️ 7y
Lindy @merelybookish Yup. This scene is one of the few times that work isn't a nightmare for poetry-loving Dr Edith Vane. 7y
mom2bugnbee Yeah, I need to read this. 😉 7y
38 likes2 stack adds4 comments
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Lindy
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"The occasional hare has transformed into a full-fledged ghost, completely white except for the ear tips, the dark contour around the eyes. Others more speckled and freckled."

[I see a lot of jackrabbits in my neighbourhood, including the pair above who were in different stages of camouflage when winter suddenly became spring.]

Sydsavvy Very cool. We currently have a whole CROP of Peter Cottontails!!! 7y
Lindy @Sydsavvy Do you have a garden that's vulnerable to them? 7y
Sydsavvy No-I'm a fair weather Gardner. I only do flowers in The Texas heat-mainly zinnias, sunflowers and potato vines. I'm not sure I'll do anything for a fall garden other than herbs and fall flowers. Lol. Beauty over practicality! 7y
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Lindy @Sydsavvy 🌻🌹🌺 7y
Hooked_on_books Any jackalopes? 😂 7y
Lindy @Hooked_on_books OMG did you read? : 7y
Hooked_on_books @Lindy No, are there jackalopes in it? When I was a kid, my dad thought they were hilarious and looked for every mention of them he could find, including pictures. 7y
Lindy @Hooked_on_books Yes, the MC joins a line of prostitutes waiting to be blessed by a sacred jackalope and trouble ensues. It's not a book I would recommend, but it had its popular moment. 7y
rabbitprincess 🐰🐰♥️♥️😊 Yay, rabbits! 7y
43 likes9 comments
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Lindy
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…evil stacks of sloppily graded essays still lumping the surface of her desk even though she scraped through at least 10 of them just before bed. Maybe 8 & a half, but she can't tell because she kept flipping back & forth between papers she'd already marked, worried her grades are too high & the students & the dean & associate dean will think she's a soft touch. & some of the papers she worries she graded too low & the students will come to her 👇

Lindy …office & squeal with their tight, cross mouths about how they've never received grades this low EVER. 7y
mom2bugnbee This professor could not agree/relate more to this quote. Every. Single. Semester. 7y
41 likes3 comments
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Lindy
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Academia comedy on steroids. A humanities building with corridors/rooms/exits that appear and disappear. Carnivorous jackrabbits on campus. And never enough time: "Edith claws through the chlorinated water in the university's Olympic-sized swimming pool. She squints through her goggles. 7:35 a.m. Soon it will be 8 a.m. and her day basically gone. Wasted!"

33 likes1 stack add
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Waynegjr
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Yes please.

Chelsey That is quite the combination! 7y
Andrea4 Uh..well..interesting!?? Let us know how it is! 7y
28 likes2 comments
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RealBooks4ever
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#maymostanticipated Hoping this one turns out to be as crazy as it sounds!

RealLifeReading Great title 7y
10 likes2 comments