Winner, SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award

Deborah Joy Corey’s disturbing portrait of a dysfunctional family in rural New Brunswick won the prestigious SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award. This popular dramatization of the best-selling first novel was dramatized by the author and first heard on CBC Radio in 1996.

Narrated by a nameless nine-year-old girl, Losing Eddie recounts with heart-wrenching detachment a succession of tragedies that unravel an already vulnerable household on a lonely backwoods highway. Mama suffers from mental illness, Daddy hides out in the wellhouse drinking beer, and “Sister” has a brutish husband who slaps her around. When 15-year-old Eddie comes home from reform school, things seem to be looking up. But before long, Eddie is gone again for good killed in a drunk-driving crash. None of this resembles the images of happy family life on TV, but Corey’s stoic child narrator clings to her faith that everything will be all right.

Author

Deborah Joy Corey has lived much of her life in New Brunswick and in neighbouring Maine. Her first novel, Losing Eddie, won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. She is also the author of the novel The Skating Pond and she was recently awarded the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize by the radio program Selected Shorts.

Awards

Winner: SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award

Reviews

“Stunning.” Macleans

“Honest.” School Library Journal

Details

2 pages
Pub date: September 27, 2004