The Chrome Suite
CBC Books | Posted: August 8, 2018 7:40 PM | Last Updated: August 30, 2018
Sandra Birdsell
Set in Manitoba, Sandra Birdsell's spellbinding novel reaches back nearly four decades into the life of scriptwriter Amy Barber. In a journey shadowed by the future and the past, Amy travels by car from Toronto to Winnipeg with her younger lover and reconstructs the events that brought her to where she is today. As the narrative moves from a small town during one extraordinarily hot summer at the close of the 1950s when a death changes everything, to the 1960s and 1970s when Amy marries, goes to live in the city, and begins to have reason to fear for her young son's well-being, Birdsell uncovers the inadvertent damage that can be done within the most well-meaning of families. Vivid, darkly humorous, erotic, The Chrome Suite is an emotionally charged story of darkness and light that evokes the sometimes dangerous territory of the past. (From Emblem Editions)
From the book
"I can feel it," I tell the doctor, "right there." I press the spot just to the left of my breastbone where something swollen lies. Sometimes I imagine it to be thick and flat and the texture of liver, this thing that slides around inside my body, its presence felt in an almost imperceptible movement, a nudge against my bottom rib bone, my skeleton. At other times I envision the swollen thing to have the uncertain shape of an overripe tomato; hold it too tightly and your fingers will penetrate the thin membrane of taut skin and it will spill, a shapeless pulp, into the palm of your hand.
From The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell ©2002. Published by Emblem Editions.