Spadework - Softcover

Findley, Timothy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571214541 ISBN 13: 9780571214549

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2003

Synopsis

On a summer evening a gardener's spade slices a telephone cable into distant silence. The resulting disconnection is devastating. With the failure of one call to reach the house, an ambitious young actor becomes the victim of sexual blackmail. The blocking of a second call leads tragically to murder. And when the telephone repairman arrives to mend the broken line, his innocent yet irresistible male beauty has explosive consequences.

In Spadework, Timothy Findley, a master storyteller, has created an electric word-play of infidelity and morality. Spadework tells a story that ripples with ever-widening repercussions, a sensual, witty and completely absorbing novel.

About this title

Review

(Findley’s) new novel is set against the backdrop of the Stratford Festival in Ontario, a milieu that he expertly cracks open. -- New York Times

A scandalously juicy novel... Entertaining backstage backstabbing exposes the staggering consequences of overweening ambition. -- Seattle Times

Spadework is Findley's darkest comedy yet. -- The Gazette (Montreal)

About the Author

Timothy Findley was born in Toronto in 1930. His first career was in the theatre; he was a charter company member of Ontario's Stratford Shakespearean Festival in 1953, and toured several European capitals.$$$In 1963, Findley turned to writing full-time and in 1977 his third novel, The Wars, won a Governor General's Award. It is now considered a Canadian classic. Following his bestsellers such as Famous Last Words, he won an Edgar Award for The Telling of Lies, while his collection of short stories, Stones, won Ontario's Trillium Award.$$$Findley's first work of non-fiction, Inside Memory: Pages from a Writer's Workbook, made him the first two-time winner of a Canadian Authors Association Award; he had earlier won its fiction counterpart for his novel, Not Wanted on the Voyage. He has also written plays, and his third, The Stillborn Lover (1993), won the CAA Drama Award, as well as winning an Arthur Ellis Award and Chalmers Award. His later novels include Headhunter (1993) and The Piano Man's Daughter (1995). His most recent play, Elizabeth Rex, was produced at the 2000 Stratford Festival in Canada.$$$Along with the likes of Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley has become one of Canada's most acclaimed and best-selling authors. In 2000, Faber published Pilgrim and reissued The Wars and Famous Last Words. His last novel, Spadework, was published in 2002, the year in which Timothy Findley died.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0571214541
• ISBN 13: 9780571214549
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 432