BOOKSPO is back for a spectacular second season, kicking off with Corinna Chong and her latest, BAD LAND, a novel which, she tells me, began with a curious dream, along with her childhood memories of the unique topography of Drumheller, Alberta, and (however unconsciously) took inspiration from the extraordinary progragonist of Jeanette Winterson’s 1989 novel SEXING THE CHERRY.
Corinna talks about how arriving in Drumheller feels like going back in time, the seeming unreality of such a landscape, the metaphoric possibility of fossils, about how teaching SEXING THE CHERRY required her to be intimately connected with the text, the challenge of writing a slow-burn narrative, and more! I loved this weird and wonderful novel so much, and our conversations lived up to all my expectations.
About BAD LAND:
A slow-burning story exploring the generational effects of repression and transgression, set against the raw, eerie landscape of the badlands
Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez - a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak - upending Regina's quiet life.
It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through the plains and mountains of Alberta's badlands to the coast of BC, forcing Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.
By turns thrilling and heartwarming, rife with gothic tension, and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.
CORINNA CHONG’S books are the novel Bad Land (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024), the acclaimed story collection The Whole Animal (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023) and the novel Belinda's Rings (NeWest Press, 2013). Her short fiction has appeared in magazines across Canada. She lives in Kelowna, BC, where she teaches in the English department at Okanagan College.
Share this post