Opium Dreams
In Margaret Gibson’s powerful first novel, a daughter’s poignant attempt to understand her dying father illuminates both their lives. Writer Maggie Glass watches her father fade into the murky realm of Alzheimer’s. To understand the man Timothy Glass was, Maggie pieces together fragments of his life, and, in doing so, gradually tells her own harrowing story. Spanning decades, the novel brilliantly interweaves the strands of a family’s past and present, vividly evoking an Ontario farm in the ’30s; the North African desert in wartime; a hospital in British Columbia, where a returning soldier’s dreams for the future alter irrevocably; Toronto in the ’50s, and in the decades that follow. Infused with startling imagery and with language that cuts straight…
$11.99
June 21, 2016
Margaret Gibson received instant acclaim on the publication of her award-winning first collection of short stories, The Butterfly Ward (1976). One of the stories from the collection, “Making It,” was made into the now-classic movie Outrageous, starring Craig Russell; another, “Ada,” was made into a CBC-TV movie, directed by Claude Jutra. This was followed by two highly praised collections, Considering Her Condition (1978) and Sweet Poison (1993). The story of her own custody battle for her son was made into the TV movie “For the Love of Aaron.” Her most recent short story collection is The Fear Room (1996). Opium Dreams, her first novel, won the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1998.
Margaret Gibson died in Toronto in February…
