This pipe felt good, its cold sides penetrated through his jacket and made him feel more awake than he’d had in weeks. And there was something about cars passing without being able to see him that gave him a sort of satisfaction. He was hidden from the street, from anyone walking by and was cocooned in cement. Transported. Slowly the muscles in his body relaxed, his legs, his neck, though he hadn’t even realized they’d been tight. He felt himself breathe and with each exhale felt tension leave his body.
 Outside something began tapping the pipe. He opened his eyes, startled by the sound of a sort of scraping along the top of it as if something was being dragged against the cement. For a moment he though it might be an animal but quickly dismissed the idea, the sound being almost metallic. He waited, hoping whoever it was would continue walking and was surprised at how afraid he was. The sound of his heart seemed to slide from his ears and mouth into the pipe where it echoed and kept an ominous beat like a bad horror movie, he thought, the killer taking one slow step at a time… —From Lures
Grace is 17 and wonders why she feels different. Sheila, her mother, spends endless hours cleaning, furiously trying to scrub away the stubborn pain leaching through the plastic-encased surface of their immaculate home. Gary, her brother, hides in the basement, squinting at life through a haze of pot smoke. Les, her father, finds instant gratification in buying an endless parade of gadgets, each one promising to give him the respect and power he craves. It’s no wonder that Lily’s family seems so normal to Grace. Attracted by her friend’s warm, bright house and caring parents, Grace searches for a refuge of love and acceptance. But although they hardly know each other, a secret thread connects both families, slowly and inexorably unraveling their lives.
With lyrical grace and formidable story telling talent, Susan Goyette builds her first novel to a climax that is raw in its emotional power, yet sensitive and ultimately redemptive in its portrayal of people snared by their own pain. There is suffering, but also great beauty and hope in Goyette’s poetically drawn small-town world. 
Lures is a novel that is difficult to put down, driven by the remarkable writing skill of a writer who will be welcomed as one of the best new voices in today’s literary fiction.

Lures

Literature & Fiction

Goyette, Sue

Literary

Harper-perennial

The ocean has never had a biographer quite like Sue Goyette. Living in the port city of Halifax, Goyette’s days are bounded by the substantial fact of the North Atlantic, both by its physical presence and by its metaphoric connotations. And like many of life’s overwhelming facts, our awareness of the ocean’s importance and impact waxes and wanes as the ocean sometimes lurks in the background, sometimes imposes itself upon us, yet always, steadily, is. This collection is not your standard “Oh, Ocean!” versifying. Goyette plunges in and swims well outside the buoys to craft a sort of alternate, apocryphal account of our relationship with the ocean. In these linked poems, Goyette’s offbeat cast of archetypes (fog merchants, lifeguards, poets, carpenters, mothers, daughters) pronounce absurd explanations to both common and uncommon occurrences in a tone that is part cautionary tale, part creation myth and part urban legend: how fog was responsible for marriages, and for in-laws; why running, suburbs and chairs were invented; what happens when you smoke the exhaust from a pride of children pretending to be lions. All the while, the anthropomorphized ocean nibbles hungrily at the shoreline of our understanding, refusing to explain its moods and winning every staring contest. “I wrote these poems,” comments Goyette, “because I know very little about the ocean and yet rely on it like a mirror, a compass.” In Ocean, Goyette demonstrates how a spirited, playful and richly mythopoetic engagement with the world can actually strengthen our grasp on its bigger truths.
Winner of the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterwork Arts Award and finalist for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Ocean

Poetry

Gaspereau Pr

In 2006, a four-year-old Massachusetts girl died from prolonged exposure to a cocktail of drugs that a psychiatrist had prescribed to treat ADHD and bipolar disorder; her parents were convicted of her murder. In The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl, Sue Goyette strives to confront the senselessness of this story, answering logic’s failure to encompass the complexity of mental illness, poverty and child neglect (or that of our torn and tangled social ‘safety net’) with a mythopoetic, sideways use of image and language. Avoiding easy indignation, Goyette portrays the court proceedings’ usual suspects in unusual ways (the judge, the jury, the lawyers, the witnesses and the girl’s troubled parents), evokes the ghost of the girl, personifies poverty as a belligerent bully and offers an unexpected emblem of love and hope in a bear. Like the utterances of a Shakespearean fool, Goyette’s quirky, often counter-logical poems offer a more potent vision of reality than any documentary account, her eulogy for a girl society let down renewing the prospect for empathy and change.
Winner of the 2016 ReLit Poetry Award and Winner of the 2016 J.M. Abraham Poetry Prize.

The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl

Poetry. Sue Goyette's OUTSKIRTS is a tour de force. Its originality lies in Goyette's refusal of despair, her conviction that the connections among people, their conversation, curiosity, empathy and awe, can help us see a way forward. Her aim is to find energy in human love, a way to walk the darkness rather than hide from it. This book will name you, and frighten you; make you laugh, and arm you for what is to come.

outskirts

Brick Books

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Books by Goyette, Sue

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goyette, Sue. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lures

Ocean

The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl

outskirts