Shari Lapeña worked as a lawyer and as an English teacher before turning to writing fiction. She is a graduate of The Humber School for Writers, where her mentor was David Adams Richards. An excerpt from her first novel, Things Go Flying, appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of The Dalhousie Review. She won The Globe and Mail’s Great Toronto Literary Project contest, and was shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Awards. She lives in Toronto and is currently at work on her second novel, The Poets’ Preservation Society.

More information can be found about Shari on her website: www.sharilapena.com

 

Published

Things Go Flying
(Heritage Group, Brindle & Glass, 2008)

Take David Sedaris' wit and mix it with the outrageousness of Douglas Coupland's fiction and you get a glimpse of the Walker family in Things Go Flying.  A dark, hilarious and wildly inventive contemporary comedy about how the past can come back to haunt you. Literally.

The Walker Household
Desperately average and growing more disappointed by the day, Harold is clearly suffering from a mid-life depression, brought on in part by the abrupt death of his one-time best friend, Tom. Harold’s wife Audrey, an increasingly frustrated housewife, is a control freak silently harbouring an explosive secret. They have two teenaged sons: John, the feckless eldest, who appears to be headed for disaster (his girlfriend wants him to steal a car); and Dylan, a caustic observer who doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.

Things Go Flying in the Walker household when Harold’s long-deceased mother comes back to haunt them. Harold is horrified to find himself suddenly communicating with the dead. He has his mother’s gift—and if there was ever a gift he wanted to return, it’s this one! A door has opened onto the past—and Audrey is similarly terrified. How is she to safeguard her secret now? If she can’t control this world, how is she to control the next one? And how will she protect her good china?

As his situation becomes increasingly complicated, Harold, who has made a practice of avoiding things all his life, must confront two problems—how to find meaning in this life, and how to come to grips with the mostly terrifying idea that life just might go on forever!

Quotes:

“Shari Lapena's novel is wonderful high-purpose fun. The characters try to be unremarkable, but remarkable things keep happening to them. I enjoyed it tremendously.”
     - Paul Quarrington

“A wonderfully alive, funny and inventive novel”
     - David Adams Richards

“Things Go Flying is a delight to read: funny and tender and vibrant. The story rips along, told in vivid scenes that are masterfully paced. It's all working in this novel: conflicted characters frustrated with each other, hope-mangled maybe, but still optimistic. It rings true in the most charming and most satisfying way. I gobbled it up.”
     - Eliza Clark