Ray, a single mother and superior court judge, pounds a punching bag in her basement to manage her anger. She has concluded that life must be lived tightly leashed or chaos will move in. Her prime directive is to protect her daughter, Armada, from life's unruly forces. Ray deftly handles other people's problems, managing her courtroom and the politics of the judges' chambers, and defusing her neighbors' battles, all the while staying above the fray. But when her feckless, sweet brother re-enters Ray's life, bringing unpredictability and wayward emotion with him, and her sexy, but enervating Guatemalan ex crashes into her world, she realizes that her carefully piloted ship is not watertight after all - it's no better than a sieve. Cascading events reveal to Ray that suffering cannot be held at bay and that life must be lived in all its messy glory.
Peopled with a cast of characters for the ages, from the eccentrics that surround Ray's courtroom and her street to a flock of recalcitrant hens, and laden with her trademark sly wit, this is Strube's best novel yet - sharp, intensely humane, moving, and funny. Award-winning novelist Cordelia Strub's latest, At Sea in a Sieve, is a sharp and moving portrait of Ray, a judge, single parent, and tightly leashed woman whose survival strategies seem suddenly to be coming apart.
Cordelia Strube is the author of 11 critically acclaimed novels. Winner of the CBC literary competition, she has been nominated for the Governor General's Award and the Trillium Book Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her novel On the Shores of Darkness There Is Light won the City of Toronto Book Award. Strube divides her time between her Toronto home and her country house in Yarker, ON.
Sales and Market Bullets
• FOR READERS OF: Miriam Toews and Heather O'Neill.
• CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR: Strube's previous work is critically acclaimed by the New York Times Book Review, Newsday, and all of Canada's national newspapers, and Strube has been a finalist for every major Canadian literary award, including the Giller Prize, Governor General's Award, and Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
• HUMOROUS AND TRAGIC: Cordelia Strube is a master of black comedy storytelling, blending humor and heartbreak in a way that rivals Jonathan Tropper at his finest. Her portrayal of characters is deeply empathetic yet unflinching as she navigates flawed personalities in difficult circumstances.
