If you remember a couple of weeks back author Michael Christie passed the Vancouver Book Club torch to Lee Henderson. As is the M.O. for the V.B.C., most folks in the club read Michael's The Beggars Garden, then we got together and had a chance to talk with him about it in an intimate (FREE) meeting at the Waldorf, and at the end the next selection for the club was announced. And it was Lee Henderson's The Man Game! And Lee was there to say hello to everybody!
The Man Game was shortlisted for the 2008 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and won the 2009 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize as well as the 2009 City of Vancouver Book Award. While we had Lee's attention I asked him what the best place in town would be to buy his book, as I hadn't read it yet. He pointed me to The WIlder Snail, a nice little coffee shop and general store at 799 Keefer Street in the heart of Strathcona. So I headed down there, grabbed a copy and ordered up an Americano that came in a fully compostable Ecotainer cup. It's one of those sweet little shops where if they have some leftover steamed milk from the latte they just poured and you ordered an Americano they ask you if you'd like that steamed milk so it doesn't go to waste, and you say yes, smile real big, and come back again because they're obviously super nice people running an honest business.
OH! And each of the copies they have of Lee's book are signed!!! Here's the one I chose:
Stay tuned for our announcement of the next Vancouver Book Club meeting where you'll have a chance to sit down with Lee and talk about this book.
The Man Game synopsis:
On a recent Vancouver Sunday afternoon, a young man stumbles upon a secret sport invented more than a century before, at the birth of his city. Thus begins The Man Game, Lee Henderson’s epic tale of loved requited and not, that crosses the contemporary and historical in an extravagant, anarchistic retelling of the early days of a pioneer town on the edge of the known world.
In 1886, out of the smouldering ashes of the great fire that destroyed much of the city,Molly Erwagen—former vaudeville performer—arrives from Toronto with her beloved husband, Samuel, to start a new life. Meanwhile, Litz and Pisk, two lumberjacks exiled after the fire, and blamed for having started it, are trying to clear their names. Before long, they’ve teamed up with Molly to invent a new sport that will change the course of that fledgling city’s history.
