Last Splash

You might have heard the name Ethel Wilson. It’s the name on the prize given to the best work of fiction by a writer from BC or Yukon every year. Eden Robinson, Madeleine Thien, Lee Henderson, Alix Hawley, Jennifer Manuel, Billy-Ray Belcourt, some winners you should know.

Ethel Wilson wrote (at least) one hell of of novel herself. Swamp Angel.

Maggie Lloyd is a literary descendant of Ishmael and an ancestor of the characters in Elizabeth McCracken and Anakana Schofield novels; she rejects the life she’s found herself in and seeks out her own agency and reckons with what that means. It starts off with a great run through Vancouver of its day (or night rather) as Maggie makes her move. There’s circus folk and an absolute stunning passage about swimming that I read into Instagram:

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More books about swimming? Why not?

Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro has another excellent passage about swimming. It goes on a good while. Translated from French with a poet’s ear by Eve Hill-Agnus, Ultramarine is everything I love in a book. It wrestles with big ideas, it feels intimate, it’s full of sailors. Full! i want to write a book like Ultramarine.

Horsefly, by Mireille Gagné (trans. Pablo Strauss) hits similar to Ultramarine. It’s a quick read, deceptively simple prose that breathes life into concepts that will stick with you. It’s definitely pulpier (complimentary). This one takes place during a heatwave in June, 2025 in Quebec, and flashes back to a biological warfare research station on an island in the St-Lawrence during World War Two. Great stuff, and good fun when told from the POV of a horsefly. And, yes, there’s swimming.