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A woman undergoes dream deprivation to find the man who has shadowed her life and now her marriage. Spin Dry is a comedy, a satire, an anti-romance, a novel about lost fathers, suburban tract housing, Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Fluff. ... Read more

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From the winner of Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award for Fiction comes a remarkable novel of betrayal and redemption that explores the farthest reaches of human experience.

When Tim Wakelin, recently a widower, heads north in search of a story about a local healer named Caroline Troyer, he enters a world that is real yet strange. Familiar landmarks disappear and extraordinary events unfold as his life becomes intertwined with hers. Even the landscape itselfthe ancient rocks, myriad lakes, and cathedral forests of the Canadian Shieldbecomes a source of threat. How can he understand this strange and beautiful woman when he is no longer sure why he has really come or what is happening to him?

Until now, Caroline's life has been dominated by her parents: her cunning father, Ross, who has exerted an unspoken power over her since she was a child; and Ardis, her weak yet abusive mother. Aware that her ability to heal is only part of a mysterious process of transformation that she is undergoing, Caroline must break free of the chains of her family. Perhaps Tim can provide the sanctuary she needs, if he has the strength to survive the violent forces unleashed by his arrival.

Greg Hollingshead has created a brilliant and arresting story of grief, delusion, and family betrayal, but also of transcendent love and deep personal loyalty, in an extraordinary novel that explores the fine line between madness and sanity, and between physical and spiritual reality. Darkly beautiful, illuminated by flashes of wit and great lyricism, written in a compelling cadence all its own, The Healer is a work of immense power and original sensibility.Amazon.com Review
If anyone needs healing, it's Tim Wakelin, freelance journalist and recentwidower. When he comes to the small Canadian mining town of Grant, Wakelinthinks it's to do a story on a purported faith healer; instead, hediscovers a balm for his own wounded soul. Healing comes in the person ofCaroline Troyer, a woman with miraculous, if unpredictable, powers. Passinghimself off as a man in search of property in the country, Wakelinconvinces Caroline, whose father is a realtor, to show him around. It isn'tlong before he realizes that far from being a charlatan, this woman is thereal McCoy; on impulse he decides not to write about her after all and toactually buy that mythical cabin in the woods he's been using as a coverstory. But Wakelin's arrival upsets a precarious balance in Caroline'spersonal life as she struggles to separate herself from her controllingfather and embittered mother. Internal struggles become externalized whenWakelin gets lost in the woods and she must save him.

Greg Hollingshead's tale of love, betrayal, and redemption in thebackwoods of Canada features interesting characters and a fascinatingpremise; unfortunately, the writing is often too overwrought to bear theweight of the story. Describing a meal, he writes: "Eggs of crumbling yolkand rubber-white albumen on a carbon laminate, dank toast, coffee a rustedknife-edge of heartburn, thin and without taste. A breakfast something likea story about a healer, something like a saint's life. Of dubiousprovenance. The dog's breakfast of narratives. Hearsay, exaggeration,wishful thinking, local legend. Followed now through a confusion of smokeand opinion, in a place for locals, a meetinghouse of initiates, with theblanket of the familiar draped all round. Cozy as heaven, old as hell." Ifa plate of bacon and eggs can elicit this kind of drama, what can we expectwhen something important happens?Despite its faults, however,The Healer has one ace in the hole: Caroline Troyer, an original andsatisfyingly complex character who consistently confounds expectations.--Margaret Prior ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Resisting Representation
"The Healer" is an intriguing work of art that takes place between language and experience. Unfinished conversations, ruptured continuities, traumatic symbiosis, obsession, and self-forgiveness are themes embedded in a non-linear narrative that is rich in emotion and intensity.

Under the guise of checking out country property, the widower embarks on a journey to a small town in search of the healer Caroline. In the process of finding Caroline, interacting with her, and experiencing a strange chain of events with her, the widower's consciousness disintegrates along with his memories. He finds himself amidst the whirlwind of long-suppressed emotions while Caroline is held hostage by incomprehensible forces of repressed memories. His psychological breakdown synchronizes with hers. Their dialogues are codified metaphors within metaphors that fiercely resist linear codification--the reader is invited to participate in an intriguing, sublime, and utterly disorienting roller coaster.

It's a paradox: the wound healer humanizes the wounded by making space for pain for him while the wounded humanizes the wound healer by making space from pain for her. The narrator is an alchemist in every sense of the word: the grim natural landscape becomes a brooding ground for magic; the widower's bleak internal landscape thunders back to life with a strange sensation that resembles hope but is not quite hope.

Greg Hollingshead is an artisan of words and a master of atmosphere. Vulnerability, cruelty, and unfathomable grief are beautifully woven into his lyrical prose. Although overwhelmingly intense at times, Hollingshead's portrayal of the characters and the surreal dreamscape they inhabit is nothing short of brilliant. An unforgettable read.

MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT AN EXHAUSTING READ...
Holding the book in your hand, or as closely as you can, you are suddenly, unexplicably aware of how close you can be and yet still be separated from the physicality of its existence, the glossy surface through which appears the cover design and the words, the chemical compunds which make up the ink, the paper itself produced by methods of which those outside the industry know little more than the shadow-remembrances from their social studies classes and discussions of manufacturing, the great trees cut and mulched and pulped, the paper wound onto enormous rolls and shipped to the printers, cut to size and prepared for the presses, stamped mechanically and mercilessly with the ink, bound and fitted and trimmed and glued and wrapped and boxed, the product it has become touted and promoted and sold and shipped and sold again.

I could go on...

Holligshead's style is -- how shall I say -- a BIT overly decriptive.When I read one of the editorial reviews of this novel, I thought the writer's complaint about the detailed description of the breakfast plate was a little picky.Upon reading this book, I relaize that this example was only the tip of the iceberg.

Still, it's a good story, and the main characters are interesting, if not necessarily admirable.Caroline Troyer, the healer of the title, is extraordinary -- and Tim Wakelin, the recently-widowed reporter who has come to the small town on the Canadian Shield to meet and write about her, is very believable as a man searching blindly for a way to get over the loss of his wife and find some meaning in his life.Ross Troyer, Caroline's father, is both despicable and pitiable -- he is a classic case of someone who is so ignorant of the forces that move him through life that he hasn't a clue about the damage he does.Several of the other characters seem to be little more than excuses for intermittent interaction.

I had to force myself through this novel -- although I'll admit that it got easier about 2/3 of the way through it.I suppose in the end it was worth it to follow these characters' story through to its conclusion, but I don't know how heatily I can recommend this book.The author's verbosely overburdened style made it the literary equivalent of slogging through ankle-deep mud, uphill -- reading it actually made me tired.

I've read plenty of books in my life in which sentences (and descriptions) went on for pages and pages -- Garbiel Garcia Marquez comes to mind.In the case of Garcia Marquez's writing, the passages were absolutely alive with light.In the case of THE HEALER, it only added to my ability to share with the characters the hopelessness of being lost in the Canadian woods, trudging forward out of instinct, not knowing where or when I would come out of it.

If you're appreciative of writing that can do absolute wonders with an amazing economy of words, read William Trevor or Mark Salzman.

I've got to rest now... ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Bedlam
Seems very thoroughly researched and really makes you feel, see, and even smell the horror of this legendary madhouse. The problem for me is its unflagging, relentless grimness. Noplace I'd want to visit.

Gripping, disturbingly entertaining, heartbreaking and hopeful
I'm saddened by the reviews finding this book a difficult read and hope they scare no one away.Hollingshead presents a confusing subject matter in an gripping manner with plain language.At the conclusion of the novel I'm left haunted by the characters and contemplating the many issues the author raised: the nature of madness and reality, the enduring power of love, and the bewildering effects of twisted kindness.

Not worth it
I wanted to give up on this novel because it is so confusing.I usually enjoy a challenging read that requires my attention and memory, but I found many passages in this book that I could not decipher.I kept going because I thought at some point everything would fall into place.After slogging through the entire book, I felt I had wasted my time.

If I were "mad" in 1798...
Several times I thought about giving up on Bedlam by Greg Hollingshead (on page 58, on page 176 and so on). What keep me reading was that I wondered whether I would have escaped being thrown in a mad house if I had lived in London at the turn of the nineteenth century, as had Jamie Matthews.

I see now that it was the enigmatic and slightly confusing tale of Jamie's possibly wrongful confinement of over 20 years in Bethlem Hospital for the insane that kept me reading. If I could have come to the conclusion that he was insane and that this story was simply a dreary tale of his mistreatment, I perhaps would have put the book down. If I could have surmised that he was in fact confined because he came up on the wrong side of a political situation, I also perhaps would have put the book down. What kept me reading was the fact that I couldn't make up my mind even to the very end.

The true genius of Hollingshead's book lies in the depth and complexity of the two main characters, Jamie Matthews and the John Haslam (Bethlem's apothecary), drawing you from one side to the other. Sometimes Jamie's ravings have just enough sense to make you believe his sanity, then something about them pushes it just past normal and you can see why he is committed. Likewise, John Haslam's treatment of the patients at Bethlem seems as times a life of dedication to serving the unfortunate in the best way he knows how, and at others times it is a self-serving project to further his own notoriety. In both cases, for both characters the answer is that it is all true. Rarely has there been such a wonderful portrayal of contradictions of the human condition.

On page 436, the words of Jamie's devote wife Margaret sum up this portrayal of mental illness with a truth that persists to this day:

"Perhaps in an imperfect world you don't find intelligence at its keenest pitch without some touch of [madness]. Perhaps there needs a certain pressure, heating the thoughts until they glow, and glowing ignite yours and by that sympathy show you more than you could ever see on your own, but then the brilliance grows too hot, fever sets in, and all common sense is lost, and that connexion is betrayed."

I would recommend this book to everyone, only don't complain to me as you slog through it. Wait and patiently persist and it you will discover it's true brilliance. ... Read more

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From ?an eerily original, powerfully moving distinctive voice? (Time Out) comes a collection of funny, disturbing suburban tales that invite comparisons to Raymond Carver and Flannery O?Connor.Winner of Canada?s Governor-General?s Literary Award.Amazon.com Review
Erudite yet immediate, the dozen stories that make up thiscollection from Canadian writer Greg Hollingshead are set in thefamiliar urban and suburban worlds of everyday life. With adeceptively simple prose, a sharp ear for dialogue and the tellingmoments of existence, and a skewed sense of humor, Hollingshead peelsback the surface to reveal the psychological terrors and injuries thatinform his characters. The Roaring Girl, the author's firstbook to be published in the United States, was a bestseller in Canada,where it won the prestigious Governor General's Literary Award forfiction in 1995, putting him in the company of Canadian writers suchas Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great read!
Hollingshead has a hand of mixing different levels of weirdness together in a way that fascinate me but are even to an extent retraceable. Notice for instance how the protagonist of one of the short stories is under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms and then tries to leave his front door. This scene is brilliantly described. These different levels of weirdness create a very strong atmosphere that is defining the unfolding story. I very much liked the mood of the gas station in "The Roaring Girl" or the strange people who come and show some slides to the protagonist family. Hollingshead is almost unique - the only other writer, and also a short story writer at that, is Rick Bass ("The Watch").

A Surprise Blast!
Greg Hollingshead writes with the same measured and crafty precision of Raymond Carver, but with a great blindsiding sense of humour that is patently Canadian. The first two stories especially blew me away and had melaughing out loud because they were so good. Get on the bandwagon forHollingshead now.He's a good one. ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Greg Hollingshead, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1959 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author