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Winner, Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize

Herring is a hapless lobster fisher lost in an unexceptional life, bored of thinking the same old thoughts. One December day, following a hunch, he cuts a hole in the living room floor and installs a hoist, altering the course of everything in his life.

Author

Nicholas Herrings head-spinning debut novel, Some Hellish, won the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Critics described it as heart-wrenchingly beautiful, irreverent, screwball, and inspired, and a winding, raucous ride. His writing has also appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead.

Herring graduated from St. Jeromes University with an honours degree in English Literature and attended the University of Toronto, where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. He lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island, where he works as a fisherman and a carpenter. Your Breath in Charcoal is Nicholas Herrings second novel.

Richard Clarkin is an award-winning film, television, and theatre actor. On screen, he starred in The Drawer Boy, for which he received the Canadian Film Award for Featured Performance, and plays Dick Dunphy in the CBC hit Son of a Critch. He has originated roles such as Jacob Mercer in Salt Water Moon for the stage and was part of the historic run of The Lion King in Toronto where he played Scar. Clarkin makes his home in Toronto and PEI.

Awards

Winner: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize

Reviews

Pay attention! Not since Nights Below Station Street or the masterpiece Lives of Short Duration has Atlantic Canadian literature seen a book as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as this one. The clarity and the quality of the writing, so stark and so pure, should be enough there are single lines you will read over and over but Nicholas Herring also has a larger poetic vision, equal parts physical and philosophical, that first takes in this whole world, then tenderly holds it together. This is a powerful story about people who live and work between the sea and the land, and there is elemental power pulsing through its every page. Alexander MacLeod, author of Animal Person

Like The Old Man and the Sea if the old man were a middle-aged Maritimer, and the big fish were his own life, his pain, his addictions, his deep love Some Hellish follows an irrepressible everyman, as he struggles to remake his life and come to terms with his vision of what is possible and important for him and those around him. An immersion in the rich, surprising, and vivid contemporary fishing culture, Some Hellish is some inventive, some compelling, some compassionate. Its some book. Gary Barwin, author of Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted

Brilliant and moving, Some Hellish tears a hole between the ordinary and the fantastic, the sacred and the profane. It is uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but also startling and beautiful to have things opened up like that, to see right through. Johanna Skibsrud, author of Island

Any novel that combines Tibetan monks and PEI lobster boats is fine by me. Some Hellish achieves a surprising and wonderful balance: bawdy and spiritual in the same moments. There is mondo drinking, prodigious and inventive cursing, devilish humour, and serious literary chops. Some Hellish is irreverent and screwball and its inspired writing. Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Touch Anywhere to Begin

What Cormac McCarthy did for cowboys and horses, Nicholas Herring does for fishermen and boats in his novel Some Hellish. With a deep knowledge of the Island and a passion for the language of work, Herrings voice is droll and philosophical, ribald and poetic. The age-old story of humans versus nature finds a fresh cadence as Herring trawls the seas for body and soul. There is a dark beauty within this story, and it will make the readers heart sing. Jury Citation, Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize

A tender and funny character portrait. The Miramichi Reader

Nicholas Herring is a new and utterly distinct talent. His books style and sweep, its metaphorical richness and rhetorical beauty, come from some splendid place that must only exist in his mind, a place where Shakespeare becomes the new bass player for Metallica and speaks with a curious Atlantic-Canadian accent, telling loud, sacrilegious, frequently offensive jokes. Winnipeg Free Press

Some Hellish is sort of a fishing version of Fearnoch (which was farming). Mostly male characters, written by men, characters who grow up in a traditional way of life, flawed but easy to like and root for. We want them to triumph, but are aware that the story is rooted in reality which does not usually end in happily-ever-after. I hoped for the best anyway, and did not go away disappointed with what I got. Consumed By Ink

… the art of Nicholas Herrings writing is found in its melancholy and monotony. He brings a deep familiarity to the stark setting of Prince Edward Island and lobster boats, which comes through in every detail. Acta Victoriana

A work of immediate, tactile realism, wrapped around a single hard kernel of realism. Literary Review of Canada

Nicholas Herring draws his characters and island life with specificity, nuance, and tenderness. While the plot does not follow a single linear path, readers can expect a winding, raucous ride through the storied lives of Some Hellishs crew. The Fiddlehead

Details

21 pages
Pub date: October 31, 2023