Endlings out in 2020
Joanna Lilley's third poetry collection, Endlings, will be published by Turnstone Press in spring 2020. All about extinct animals, Endlings is Joanna's attempt to connect with and elegise just some of the species that no longer exist – often directly due to the actions of human beings.Joanna publishes debut novel
Joanna Lilley's fourth book and first novel, Worry Stones, was published by Ronsdale Press in Canada in autumn 2018 and is for sale in all the usual places in print and as an e-book. In 2016 it was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award.What is Worry Stones about?
Worry Stones is a compelling portrait of the devastation that befalls a family when relationships are broken, ambition is stifled and loyalties are divided. Captivating and beautifully-observed, Worry Stones carries readers across continents, from the Canadian tundra to the south of England and north again to Scotland. When British art historian Jenny finds out her mother is seriously ill in hospital, she knows that any normal daughter would rush to her mother's bedside. But she hasn't had anything to do with her mother for eight years. Is it time to attempt a reunion she never thought would happen?What are people saying about Worry Stones?
'It’s a beautiful novel that captures the importance of the lands in which we ground ourselves, and how damaging our uprooting from those places of identification can be. Lilley illuminates all over again the complexity and friction of family relationships, and ultimately reveals that trying to outrun one’s own dissatisfaction with life is never truly possible.'– Jenna Butler, The Ormsby Review
'With tenderness and poetic vision, Lilley beautifully portrays the complex connections we have to family. An enthralling story written with boundless love for the natural world.'
– Maia Caron, author of Song of Batoche
'Worry Stones is a gorgeously written novel. I stayed up late reading it and then treated myself to a chapter each morning.'
– Julie Salverson, author of Lines of Flight
'Art and artistry wend their way through the novel as a leitmotif: what drives us to create art, why we consume it, and how art informs us of who we are. Fans of Lilley’s award-nominated poetry, and readers who appreciate elegantly crafted imagery, will enjoy Worry Stones—a novel formed, sculpted, and chiselled over a span of 17 years.
'X plus Y: Navigating familial collapse in Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness meets the stunning sense of place and blending of past and present in Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass.'
– alllitup.ca
– Cherie Thiessen, BC BookWorld
'One of the novel’s successes is the character of Jenny. In managing her difficult family, in her anxiety to understand everyone’s viewpoint, sometimes to her own detriment, in her eventual courage in confronting her father—Jenny is fully realized, complex, and utterly believable.'
– Steve Noyes, The Malahat Review
Find out more about Worry Stones.
