Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.
The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.
Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Voice and Empathy in Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
Paul Lynch thought his novel would never be published. He thought the book would destroy his career. It won the 2023 Booker. He also sees it as a personal rather than a political book. Well, okay.
Prophet Song is the story of Eilish, a biologist and mother of four whose life in a suburb of Dublin is upended by the secret police showing up at her home looking for her husband Larry, who is a teacher’s union leader. Larry disappears and never returns. The backdrop is a country sliding into totalitarianism and civil war, a setting that feels uneasily like the present time in the United States.
The beauty of this book lies in how its story unfolds in the small frame of one woman’s experience, told by a narrator who is at once painfully close to her and yet aware of dangers she cannot yet sense.