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| Hannah Holborn loves to run the country roads near her Langley home and spend sunny weekends daydreaming on her sailboat, while her tolerant husband does all of the navigating, steering and line hauling. She is lucky to share her life with three handsome, creative, seriously nice men who all share the middle name of Douglas. When she isn't reading, clothes and shoe shopping; decorating rooms with rocks and fossils; writing books, or cooking Jaime Oliver recipes, she has the great privilege of working as a Manager of Rehabilitation Services with adult survivors of brain injury. |
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Fierce
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Fresh, tough, and thoroughly addictive,
this sparkling debut collection calls to
mind the beloved and bestselling works of
Lisa Moore, Camilla Gibb, and Mark Haddon. With an irresistible combination of playfulness and empathy, these effervescent, sometimes heartbreaking tales of underachieving adults, unfairly burdened children, and the unaccountably hopeful of all ages explore the moments of grace in lives that are too often defined by loss.  A punky young woman comes to terms with the accident that took away all of her family except the grandmother who believes she is a bird, and an aging prospector - a woman - discovers that a physical "curse" might have been something of a blessing all along. "The Indian Act" is a compact coming-of-age story, charting the journey of a boy who, though bounced through many foster homes, holds on to the dream of love and unconditional acceptance; and in the novella "River Rising," three generations in a small town struggle toward joy despite the accidents of fate and the foolish mistakes that almost, but not quite, derail their lives. Fierce introduces Hannah Holborn as a shining new light in Canadian fiction. Listen to Hannah's audio interview with Joseph Planta - HERE |
REVIEWS - National Post "As strong a first collection as we have any right to hope. . . . Holborn repeatedly demonstrates her skill in handling utterly disparate, and wholly unique, characters in surprising, and often surprisingly effective, ways. . . .River Rising, the novella that rounds out the book [is] a painful, often funny, bitingly realistic yet archly surreal story [that] seems to burst at the seams with life." - Edmonton Journal "[Fierce has] a bracing farcical edge that could hardly be blacker. . . . Holborn's double high-wire act leaps effortlessly between funny and tragic. . . . [Her] visuals are cinematic." - The Globe and Mail "The best stories . . . embody whole worlds. Such is true of the tough tales in Fierce. . . . The sassy grit of her characters and their tenacious humour - wry, raw, even twisted - get them through. Now and then, naked emotion pierces through their stubborn wit, like a shard of glass." - Montreal Gazette "Holborn's collection of stories is electric with wit and insight. Sassy, sexy, full of willful women, nasty business, a few freaks, some drunks, acts of adultery and abandonment, the voice of God and veins of gold. It's fierce." - Lisa Moore, author of Alligator and Open "Holborn, a gutsy writer from British Columbia, fills the pages of her latest collection with . . . one-of-a-kind characters, in stories that run the gamut from unfortunately heartbreaking to unaccountably hopeful." - Canadian Living "(Holborn's) collection of varied tales (has) tragedy and violent drama crackling with comedic noir and irony that borders tenderly-spun farce."--Kelly McManus, North Shore Outlook "(Holborn's) imagination...runs riot with vivid and eccentric characters. (Her) scenarios vary from Monty Python to Russian tragedy. Nothing is normal in Holborn's world."--Jan DeGrass, Coast Reporter "The stories in "Fierce" contain beautiful writing, offbeat characters, and strange scenarios...there is humanity and honesty in this collection that really makes it work."--Alexis Kienlen, Grande Prairie Ink "Holborn impresses with her eye for detail, the unusual and those living on the margins... when the author anchors...whimsy to compassion, her fiction resonates deeply."--Brett Josef Grubisic, The Vancouver Sun "I loved the bizarre worlds created in these stories. Magical, surreal, and yet too real, almost too painful, as the characters grieve, hope, and dream."--Ania Vesenny "The short stories and final novella in this collection are like backstories to those pictures you run across where something strange and maybe slightly soiled is happening in medias res and you wonder what led up to the moment."--scotchneat.ca "A punky young woman dealing with heart-rending loss; an aging female prospector coping with ghost from her past; the experiences of a boy bounced from foster home to foster home; a woman, embarrassed by an unsightly birthmark, is helped by a mythical sea goddess; a mother struggling with her daughter's diagnosis; three generations of a small town struggling to find joy in spite of fate and poor judgement - all these are unblinkingly, yet lovingly, described by Holborn."--Peace Arch News
"Truthfully, I wasn't optimistic about Fierce when
I started it. This Canadian collection of
shorts stories and a novella features more
emotionally and physically damaged people
than it should be humanly possible for one
writer to conjure. Doesn't the author,
Hannah Holborn, know anyone
even remotely normal?But then a strange
thing happened during 'The Indian Act'. I
sort of fell in love. Suddenly these crazy,
damaged, sad people started making |
Contact
Publisher:
McClelland & Stewart For comments or questions about life in general, or just to chat, contact Hannah at:
hholborn@telus.net