Blasted is a story of Ruby Jones, an irreverent, exuberant, and troubled woman who lurches between love affairs and cities. The narrative shifts between generations and geographies, between contemporary life and stories as old as the hill that looms over Ruby’s birthplace. All the while, she is haunted by mysteries that surround her father and the generations before him. When Ruby unravels at last, she must face the demons that pursue her. Steeped in Newfoundland folklore, Blasted mines a rich vein of experience, layering the mundane and the magical, and evoking the forces that inhabit the land.
Kate Story's debut novel is an unlikely marriage of Newfoundland's oldest traditional lore with the contemporary urban world of St. John's and Toronto. The result is raw and strange and hilarious and affecting. Ruby Jones - itinerant waitress, sometime nude model, budding alcoholic - admits early on that tenderness and rage are her "heart language." Blasted offers both in spades.
-Michael Crummey, author of
River Thieves and The Wreckage
In Blasted, Kate Story pulls her readers into the vivid and chaotic world of young Ruby Jones, a fairy-led Newfoundlander with inner demons to slay both in southside St. John's and Queen Street Toronto. An irresistible debut novel.
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Ann Hart, author of The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple
and The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot
-Bernice Morgan, author of
Random Passage and Cloud of Bone
On the surface, Blasted is about a fairy-led family; a curse which usually skips generations. The fantastical elements, including a flock of terrifying fair pigeons that break and enter into Blue's Toronto loft where Ruby has been hiding out, are seamlessly done. The switch from realism to fantasy is always believable; the poetic imagery of the fantastic is created in brushstrokes which are lush, dangerous, seductive and tragic.
-Ursula Pflug
Blasted (getting blasted does not mean drinking to excess but being visited by fairies) is one brave, lyrical novel that seems at first like just any other coming-of-age story. It isn't. It is metaphysically lovely and metaphorically wonderful.
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Andrew Armitage, The Sun Times
This swirl of emotion and memory and anticipation tumbles forth with acrobatic skill, a blend of galloping first-person voice, present and remembered dialogue, and expansive visuals.
-The Globe and Mail
We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for our publishing activities.