16 Categories of Desire

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Douglas GloverFinalist, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

Top fiction picks for 2000: This Morning (CBC Radio); Hot Type (CBC Television); Philip Marchand, The Toronto Star

“Every sentence and every paragraph pulse with energy . . . We can read and re-read the stories with pleasure because of that verbal energy, that sense of humour, that sharpness of style and observation — and the occasional moment of genuine pathos.” (The Toronto Star)

“Language dancing to a sardonic tune . . . [The characters’] world has a ghostly, insubstantial feel to it — a tribute to Glover’s ability to capture the feel of our current environment, one in which Marshall McLuhan’s ‘discarnate man’ flourishes with sad abandon.” (Philip Marchand, The Toronto Star, 31 December 2000, one of the top ten Canadian books of 2000)

“Saturated in irony, humour, and philosophical ripostes, 16 Categories of Desire is an affectionate slap in the face, a kiss that draws blood . . . There is not a weak story among them, and each has its own rambunctious internal logic . . . One of our most original and challenging writers. He has the linguistic and philosophical scaffolding to create stories that are truly raucous wonders. They manage to keep the reader thinking and laughing and lamenting, sometimes all simultaneously.” (Globe and Mail)

Douglas Glover“A delightful and entertaining book about the pain of lost love . . . Glover’s disconcerting power as a writer comes from the fact that he can quickly and effortlessly shift from cartoon comedy to emotional intimacy . . . Pain and love are the twin gods that rule Glover’s universe.” (The National Post)

“We are left with the mystery that the same impulses that draw people together can also pull them apart. Yet the myriad characters that act out these impulses remain in our minds since they are so wonderfully energized by Glover’s lively prose and ever surprising storytelling.” (The National Post)

“With his much-praised novel, The Life and Times of Captain N. (1993), Glover emerged as an important Canadian writer. These stories only add to his stature.” (The National Post)

“So rich are Glover’s talent and compassion that the conflicts intersect and multiply. Sex and death — their promise and threat — tangle and release in equal, debauched measure . . . Glover explores via intellect and flaunts his profound understanding and acceptance of all human desires. Glover proves what can happen when an artist cares and then takes time: hefty stories, awfully good.” (Quill & Quire, starred review)

“Douglas Glover’s characters range from the flailingly psychotic to the flatly honest, the desperately sad to the gleefully repressed . . . 16 Categories of Desire offers so much in the way of inventiveness and outright skill, I’d recommend not only this latest collection, but a look at his other work as well.” (Review of Contemporary Fiction)

“A deeply meditative book that dares to shine a light under the sheets of desire — by turns disturbing and exciting. Glover has marked out his turf among his contemporaries as a writer who bravely transforms the stuff of lurid headlines, therapists’ couches, and court dockets into high art.” (The Kitchener-Waterloo Record)

“This collection of 11 stories is uniformly strong, each deftly written and laced with withering insights into the unremitting strangeness of human desire . . . 11 portions to be savoured . . . tough and honest stories, stories that posit that we all have a heart made up of equal parts darkness and light.” (The Daily Gleaner)

“You will laugh, you will squirm, you will probably nod your head, and at the conclusion you may just have to agree with Sister Mary in the title story: “there ain’t no end to desire.” (Pottersfield Portfolio)

“The author of these 11 stories writes with great passion. He locks the reader into a shameless voyeuristic gaze, compelling us to look upon the lives of the bitterly destroyed . . . Glover has an enviable talent. His intellectually complex stories invite rereading.” (Canadian Book Review Annual)

“Desire leaps off the page — it’s not uncomplicated, but there is no mistaking it.” (Claire Wilkshire, Canadian Literature)

on “The Left Ladies Club” — “Hilarious yet sobering . . . Ratfinking on the literary mystique, Glover has produced a literary gem.” (Val Ross, Globe and Mail)

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Seize Sortes de désir

(16 Categories of Desire, French translation)

“Confirms the importance of the author at the centre of Canadian letters.” (Le Soleil)

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Table of Contents

La Corriveau — My Romance — Iglaf and Swan — The Indonesian Client — The Left Ladies Club — Bad News of the Heart — Abrupt Extinctions and the End of the Cretaceous — Lunar Sensitivities — State of the Nation — A Piece of the True Cross — Sixteen Categories of Desire.

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Order 16 Categories of Desire

and

the French translation from éditions du Boréal