Come out to Coles in Yarmouth to meet Carol and get your copies signed.

Threshold

Stories

By Carol Bruneau

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Brighten the Corner Where You Are, A Circle on the Surface, and Purple for Sky comes the first collection of short stories since the Thomas Raddall Award–nominated A Bird on Every Tree.

Moving from a worldly insouciance to a reckoning with privilege, the stories in Threshold explore the hypocrisies and contradictions of a world broken by racism, homelessness, and climate change. A woman’s grief causes her to see the ghost of her mother in others and in herself; an extended honeymoon cruise has a couple contemplating their gene pools, and their future; and a son’s disappearance prompts his parents to study the migratory patterns of herons.

From the piazzas of Naples and Palermo to Halifax’s urban wilderness, waterways, and backyards, Bruneau writes with characteristic empathy, humour, and linguistic precision. These luminescent stories reach beyond first-world worries toward compassion and hope, human resilience and the resiliency of nature.

Carol Bruneau is the author of eleven books: four short story collections, including Threshold, one work of nonfiction, No Ordinary Magic: the Art of Laurie Swim, and six novels. These include Purple for Sky, A Circle on the Surface, and These Good Hands, a novel based on the life and art of sculptor Camille Claudel, and most recently, Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis, longlisted for the 2022 International Dublin Literary Award. Her fiction has been published internationally. Her articles, short fiction, and literary and visual arts reviews have appeared nationwide in journals and newspapers, and her stories and essays in various anthologies. A past winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and two Dartmouth Book Awards, Bruneau lives and writes in Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia/Mi’kmaki.

Advance Praise

“Carol Bruneau brings you to the threshold of life in every one of her stories. She seeks out the breaking point of our hearts and minds; our internal landscape, against the vibrant panorama of the world and our place in it. This is personal. Halifax is her city, good and bad, and we are incredibly lucky to have such a knowledgeable, nuanced, and endearing voice to bring it to us. She is a marvel. You don’t get better than this.”

–Lesley Crewe, national bestselling author of Recipe for a Good Life

“In Threshold, Carol Bruneau makes visible those almost imperceptible moments when what one believes, or what is expected, begins to unravel. Nothing, it turns out, is stable. The logic of time, of how things unfold, collides with the truth—that everything will fall apart. In these keenly observant stories, beauty and fear comingle, but Bruneau’s protagonists roll with life’s little tsunamis because, well, life simply goes on, no matter what.”

–Shani Mootoo, Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Polar Vortex

These are stories of great power and insight. Bruneau illuminates her fictional world with a light so clear and bright that in it we can see into the shadows of our own world, into the usually unuttered spaces between human action and intent, between what we mean to each other and our usually inadequate attempts to articulate that meaning. And the source of that light is Bruneau’s powerfully controlled language, never flashy or extravagant, every sentence perfect unto its purpose. Threshold is an admirable and inspiring work.

– Leo McKay Jr., Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Like This and What Comes Echoing Back

Praise for previous work

Brighten the corner where you are

“‘Do you ever suppose what makes a picture look pretty might be the parts of it you can’t see? The hardship behind it, I mean.’” Spoken by a woman who knew how to love an unlovable man and find happiness in an almost unlivable life. What stays with the reader long after they have finished Brighten the Corner Where You Are is the brilliantly captured voice of Maud Lewis—as innocent and tender as it is knowing and tough. Carol Bruneau’s depiction of the artist and her world is as joyful and colourful as a Lewis landscape.”
–K. D. Miller, author of Late Breaking, shortlisted for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award

“Dazzling! A poignant imagining of Maud Lewis’s life; as colourful and joyous as Lewis’s art, as bleak as an abandoned garden in February. Bruneau’s vivid imagery and deceptively simple prose create a portrait of a woman so full of pluck, talent, humour and compassion that it will never leave me.”

–Lauren B. Davis, author of Our Daily Bread and The Empty Room

“Carol Bruneau’s Brighten the Corner Where You Are convincingly and beautifully illustrates the world of Maud Lewis, as told from the artist’s perspective. Singular, strong, and remarkably observant, she narrates her story with wit, agency, and spark, holding beauty above all throughout the successes and challenges of her lifetime. An unforgettable character portrayal, Maud’s companionable voice will stay with readers long after the last page.”

–Emily Urquhart, folklorist and author of The Age of Creativity

“Carol Bruneau’s new novel really is a “wildwood flower”—plain and beautiful, tough and tender. And her Maud Lewis is a joy to keep company with.”
–Cary Fagan, author of The Student

“Read Carol Bruneau’s latest novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, slowly, listen quietly! The voice of Nova Scotia’s beloved folk artist, Maud Lewis, is coming from eternity. Bruneau has dipped her plume to create a masterpiece. It is a gem of despair, a gem of hope for those who believe they can’t face another day of adversity. The writing is as kind as it is painful, as beautiful as it’s sorrowful, as dark as midnight footprints.

Bruneau has Maud in the palm of her hand, holds her there lovingly like a summer rose until her dying day.  And lets her bloom again for all to see the beauty we may have missed.”

–Beatrice MacNeil, author of Where White Horses Gallop and The Girl He Left Behind

“Everyone who has known Bruneau’s stunning work from her award-winning beginnings, who has admired her unwavering commitment to her art, marvelled at her characters, her ability to get to the heart of relationships, to explore, to reveal the complexity of our humanity, has been waiting for this book. In this masterful telling, the world will get to know a Maud Lewis as never before, but even better, readers get to see the full power of Bruneau’s art. This is a writer whose literary gifts and imagination will brighten the corner where we all are. In the year 2020, I can’t imagine a more uplifting book or a more timely publication. We’ve badly needed a vision like this. Bruneau holds both beauty and sadness in her magical hands.”

–Sheree Fitch, author of Kiss the Joy As it Flies

“Sometimes a gifted writer can convey a character by getting an absolute sense of that character’s voice. It is a peculiar kind of ventriloquism, some kind of almost hypnotic union, and when it works it is absolutely brilliant, as it is in Brighten the Corner Where You Are, by Carol Bruneau….What kept me reading this book, and loving to read it too, was the authenticity of Maud’s voice, and the peculiarly Maritimes flavour of her turns of phrase: the eyeballs, the gumption, the shack “back off the road a ways.”
–The Fiddlehead

“I was blown away by Carol Bruneau‘s gentle and compassionate portrayal of Maud, and the cleverly structured narrative…. She boldly takes Maud and gives her life – she’s smart, creative, and funny. And it’s that humour that saves her. Humour and her eye for beauty.”

–Consumed By Ink (April 2021)

CDN Pub Date: April 30, 2024

For media contact and information, reach out to:

Christina Marquette, Atlantic Publicist

902-455-4286 x 226; cmarquette@nimbus.ca