Perpetual Motion
Set in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth century, at a time when the machine age was coming into its own, Perpetual Motion chronicles the fortunes of settler Robert Fraser, a man obsessed with power and control. Driven by the idea of inventing a perpetual motion machine which will utilize natural energy, he neglects and destroys not only the nature around him but his own family too, as his overbearing rationality becomes a kind of tragic lunacy.
First published in 1982, Perpetual Motion is Graeme Gibson’s superb evocation of a time when faith in material progress is still challenged by superstition and a lingering belief in magic. It is an ironic yet compassionate examination of the painful consequences of human folly.
$19.95
September 21, 2010
An important spokesman for Canadian cultural identity, Gibson was the initial organizer and a founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada, and was its chairman in 1976. He was also an organizer and founding member of the Writers' Trust, a non-profit organization, and was subsequently its chairman. From 1987 to 1989 he was president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN. In 1990, he won a Toronto Arts Award for writing and publishing, and, in 1992 he received the Order of Canada. He is the author of four novels: Five Legs (1969), Communion (1971), Perpetual Motion (1982), and Gentleman Death (1993), as well as two bedside companions, The Bedside Book of Birds (2005) and The Bedside Book of Beasts (2009). Graeme Gibson died in September 2019.
The Bedside Book of Birds
Graeme Gibson
Gentleman Death / Perpetual Motion
Graeme Gibson, Introduction by Margaret Atwood Introduction by Margaret Atwood
Perpetual Motion
Graeme Gibson, Afterword by Ramsay Cook
Last of the Curlews
Fred Bodsworth, Afterword by Graeme Gibson Afterword by Graeme Gibson
The Bedside Book of Beasts
Graeme Gibson
Gentleman Death
Graeme Gibson
Wacousta
John Richardson
The Double Hook
Sheila Watson
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
Stephen Leacock, Seth
The Stone Angel
Margaret Laurence
Roughing It in the Bush
Susanna Moodie
Son of a Smaller Hero
Mordecai Richler
The Acrobats
Mordecai Richler
Love and Salt Water
Ethel Wilson
The Kissing Man
George Elliott
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories
Morley Callaghan
Blood Ties
David Adams Richards
Lives of Short Duration
David Adams Richards
The Coming of Winter
David Adams Richards
The Moslem Wife and Other Stories
Mavis Gallant
My Financial Career and Other Follies
Stephen Leacock
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1
Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon
Homesickness
Colin Barrett
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 2
Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon
A Minor Chorus
Billy-Ray Belcourt
The Paris Novel
Ruth Reichl
A Great Country
Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Until August
Gabriel García Márquez
The Golden Doves
Martha Hall Kelly
Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
Nobody Asked for This
Georgia Toews
Flesh
David Szalay
Curiosities
Anne Fleming
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
Helen Simonson
Dream Count
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Universality
Natasha Brown
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1
Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 2
Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon
The Paris Novel
Ruth Reichl
Long Island
Colm Tóibín
Curiosities
Anne Fleming
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
Helen Simonson
Alphabetical Diaries
Sheila Heti
My Beloved Life
Amitava Kumar
Precipice
Robert Harris
Dogs and Monsters
Mark Haddon
Our Evenings
Alan Hollinghurst
The Adversary
Michael Crummey
Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition)
David Mitchell
The Fraud
Zadie Smith