The World Afloat
Miniatures
In The World Afloat, a series of seventy-five “miniatures” that melds narrative with elements of prose poem and farce, master of the absurd and expert observer M.A.C. Farrant peers into the complexities of human experience – through the rear window.
Inside the linoleum-lined kitchens and lace-trimmed living rooms that drift through these stories, Farrant interrupts the daily routines – doctor’s appointments, gardening, mealtimes – of her eccentric yet familiar characters with intensely surreal, laugh-out-loud moments. What happens when a whimsical spirit becomes captive to a middle-aged body? At the end of a Love Your Package workshop, what does the wrap-up dinner look like? Can a soggy tomato salad really end someone’s marriage? Brimming with pathos and bathos in equal measure, Farrant’s smart prose offers escape and renewal from the monotony of modern life, while at the same time poking fun at her readers’ pathological devotion to the technology and interpersonal relationships that leave them feeling bored and empty.
Sexuality and depravity, childhood and bad parenting, and love and divorce are all deftly handled in this hot flash of a book that goes straight to the heart of things. As each “miniature” reads stranger (and truer) than the one before, Farrant manages to coax her readers from their well-worn, earthbound narratives and into a world afloat on satire, absurdity, and, in her most brilliant moments, expansive joy.
Currently residing in North Saanich, BC, M.A.C. Farrant is the author of ten collections of satirical and philosophical short fiction; a novel-length memoir, My Turquoise Years; a book of humorous essays, The Secret Lives of Litterbugs; and the stage adaptation of My Turquoise Years, which premiered at Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre in 2013.
Farrant has been nominated for many awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, VanCity Book Prize, National Magazine Awards, Gemini Award (for the Bravo short-film adaptation of her story “Rob’s Guns & Ammo”), Victoria Book Prize, and two Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards for her play My Turquoise Years, among others. She is a regular book reviewer for the Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, and National Post.
Farrant has taught writing at the University of Victoria, Victoria School of Writing, and Banff Centre for the Arts, and was writer-in-residence at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
