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Bina : a novel in warnings
Record details
- ISBN: 0735273235
- ISBN: 9780735273238
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Physical Description:
1 online resource
remote - Publisher: Toronto : Knopf Canada, 2019.
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| Genre: | Fiction. |
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- Baker & Taylor
"Bina is a woman who's had enough and isn't afraid to say so. "I'm here to warn you, not reassure you," she announces at the book's outset. In a series of taut and urgent missives she attempts to set the record of her life straight, and in doing so, to be useful to others. Yet being useful is what landed her in jail. Empathy is her Achilles' heel. Her troubles seem to stem from an injured stranger named Eddie, and multiply when her charity extends from delivering meals to the elderly to working with the dying. No good deed of hers goes unpunished and the costs of her capacity for care are legion: one by one she is denied her livelihood, her health, and her freedom, but her voice continues resolutely, an act of friendship in itself. Bina is an unsettling,thought-provoking novel of formal inventiveness and moral and emotional complexity by a bold and talented writer"-- - Random House, Inc.
The extraordinary bestselling novel from the acclaimed writer whose previous book, Martin John, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and whose debut, Malarky, won the Amazon First Novel Award.
"My name is Bina and I'm a very busy woman. That's Bye-na, not Beena. I don't know who Beena is, but I expect she's having a happy life. I don't know who you are, or the state of your life. But if you've come all this way here to listen to me, your life will undoubtedly get worse. I'm here to warn you ..."
So begins this "novel in warnings"--an unforgettable tour de force in the voice of an ordinary-extraordinary woman who has simply had enough. Through the character of Bina, who is writing out her story on the backs of discarded envelopes, Anakana Schofield filters a complex moral universe filled with humour and sadness, love and rage, and the consolations, obligations and mysteries of lifelong friendship. A work of great power, skill, and transformative empathy from a unique and astonishing writer.
"Anakana Schofield's Bina is a fiction of the rarest and darkest kind, a work whose pleasures must be taken measure for measure with its pains. Few writers operate the scales of justice with more precision, and Schofield is no less exacting in what she chooses to weigh. The novel's themes--male violence, the nature of moral courage, the contemporary problems of truth and individuality, the status of the female voice--could hardly be more timely or germane. Schofield's sense of injustice is unblinking and without illusion, yet her writing is so vivacious, so full of interest and lust for life: she is the most compassionate of storytellers, wearing the guise of the blackest comedian." --Rachel Cusk, Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Outline and Transit
"Intimate, disarming, and riotous, Bina is a searing exploration of one woman's soul that unwinds like a reluctant confession. Whether Bina is rescuing a ne'er-do-well from a ditch, taking a hammer to a plane or considering the dark request of her best friend, Schofield has created a compelling, practical everywoman--someone who has had enough and is ready to make a spectacle." --Eden Robinson, Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Son of a Trickster and Monkey Beach
"Insightful. Inventive. Hilarious. Genius." --Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, winner of the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction, and The Lesser Bohemians, winner of the James Tait Memorial Prize
