Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer blogs for Capacious Hold-All

Shawna Lemay liked the purse in Perfecting and asked me to do something for her wonderful purse-ish blog, Capacious Hold-All. Shawna sent me quotes about Martha’s purse that she’d underlined as she read the book. It was very cool to see the purse quotes from the book all lined up like that, and we decided to play with that. Have a look at the article/interview here. But here is a snippet:

p. 58 “Martha pulled her clothing off in Hattie’s little house, sitting with her face to the window, her reflection sharp in the glass. She got her purse up onto the bed, groped around for the gun, and sat there, her ass pressing into the soft coverlet, looking at the gun as if it could tell her anything at all.”

In fairytale and folktale, the reader comes across many tropes, and the purse is one of them. The purse, or wallet, is usually magical in that it can recreate meals or refill with gold. In short, it can fulfill dreams, dreams that often turn nightmarish for the dreamer. It is a vessel that empties and fills, like a bladder or a womb. There is always something portentous about a bag. It hides. It holds secrets. It holds possibilities. And for the owner, it protects what is hidden, and maintains the secret. In this case, it holds a gun.

Die Scream Die

In which Tony Burgess of Pontypool fame and Derek McCormack of The Show That Smells fame immortalise Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s jealous desire to own Tony Burgess’s ReLit ring, which arguably should have been hers from the get-go. If only juries weren’t so capricious. You will have to listen carefully.

I picked up this review at the cap station in Blandford, Nova Scotia while on holiday there. The cap station is at the Deck, which is Annie’s convenience store, and more importantly, the place to grab a quick chowder or slice of cream pie, while watching the ocean. Rover Arts is an online magazine out of Montreal, and I am very pleased with the review Mélanie Grandin gave Perfecting. Here is a snippet:

Perfecting, a book of rare quality and beauty, commands a slow, savouring read because no word is wasted and every sentence is heavy with meaning. Moreover, because all of the character’s past is so present in his or her mind — a past that clings like a skin they can’t molt, unlike Hollis, whose skin condition allows him to constantly renew himself — the narrative flows effortlessly between the past and the present with very little warning, thereby forcing readers to pay all the more attention. Kuitenbrouwer demands a lot from her readers, but every effort pays off tenfold.

The whole review can be read here.