From the prize-winning author Stephen Gauer comes a powerful first novel about grief and loss ...
Hold Me Now
Published by Freehand Books. Order from Amazon
"a gripping story by a talented writer." Michael Winter
Reviews for Hold Me Now
"Hold Me Now is a potent and poignant examination of a father's grief."
VANCOUVER SUN
"Gauer builds a psychological study of unwavering breadth and depth ... The story is borne along to some extent on the crime-and-punishment drama, but much more on the shifts of the interior journey. Brenner's anger and sorrow feed on each other. He takes stupid risks that unexpectedly pay off. It's fascinating at every turn and it leads to a beautifully rendered catharsis. Have a handkerchief handy."
GLOBE AND MAIL
"[Hold Me Now] is an examination of a truly tortured soul. This story is so masterfully told."
CBC, ALL POINTS WEST
Stephen talks about Hold Me Now
Background to the novel
Hold Me Now tells the sad story of a Vancouver lawyer whose world collapses one day in 2001 when his 27-year-old gay son is beaten to death in Stanley Park. I wrote the first draft of the book in the summer of 2004, when I was halfway through the MFA creative writing program at UBC. The genesis of the book is a little murky; for some reason I'd become obsessively interested in the idea of revenge after a violent crime. If someone kills your loved one, surely you would want revenge for the killing? Surely you would feel such anger and hatred towards the perpetrator of the crime that you might be tempted to attack or kill him?
But in fact this never occurs. I researched dozens of violent crimes and couldn't find a single example of revenge. In one case in British Columbia, the wife of a man murdered during a house party argument (he'd gone next door to tell some rowdy teenagers to pipe down) actually toured the province with the killer, delivering cautionary talks about the dangers of teenage drinking.
I wrote a couple of short stories that touched briefly on the idea of revenge, and then, searching for an idea for a novel-length project required for the thesis, came across the Aaron Webster story. Webster was a 40-year-old gay man in Vancouver who was beaten to death in Stanley Park by four drunk young men wielding bats and golf clubs. I used the murder as the key plot point at the beginning of the novel. My novel told the story of a fictional middle-aged lawyer, Paul Brenner, trying to come to terms with the death of his son after the beating death in Stanley Park. Brenner is not particularly likable; he's a business lawyer, uptight, rigid, a conventional man who prefers to indulge in risky, self-destructive behaviour rather than deal honestly and openly with the avalanche of grief, anger and despair he feels.
I wrote the novel quickly, in less than three months, writing for two or three hours every morning before going to work. As I remember it now, the writing came easily for me. Joan Didion has described fiction writing as "transcribing a vivid dream" and that is precisely my memory of those mornings in 2004. My thesis advisor suggested revisions and I made them, and I finished a final draft by the spring of 2005, when I presented the book as my thesis and was awarded the masters degree. I sent the novel out to a dozen agents and publishers but everyone passed. No one trashed the book (the publishing world is too polite for that) but no one liked it very much either. So I gave up on it, and any notion that I might be a published novelist in my mid-fifties.
My partner and I moved back to Toronto in the spring of 2006 to help care for our chronically ill grand-daughter, Amelia, who'd had a kidney transplant in 1997. The transplanted kidney was beginning to fail as the disease she suffered from, Henoch Schonlein Purpura, continued to attack her body. Amelia needed a new kidney, and so in June of the following year, 2007, I went to Toronto General Hospital and donated my left kidney. Both operations went well, and Amelia seemed much better with the new "Gauer kidney". After a short recovery at home, I went back to work.
But Amelia's body was failing and the "Gauer kidney" couldn't save her. She died suddenly, in her sleep, the next spring, at the age of 27. In an eerie and completely unreal series of events that followed Amelia's death, I went through some of the same experiences that Brenner underwent. The emotions were similar too: surprise and shock, confusion, grief and more grief, grief piled so high in front of you that you can't see the way ahead. The grieving came in a complex pattern. Amelia's mother, Alison, was grieving for the horrible and unjust death of her daughter, a happy and optimistic young woman who wanted only to lead a normal and healthy life. My partner grieved for her daughter and her grand-daughter. I grieved for all three.
In the late fall of 2008 I re-connected with a writer friend from the UBC program at a reading in Toronto and with her help got a copy of the Hold Me Now manuscript into the hands of her editor at Freehand Books, small publisher in Calgary. I still had no faith whatsoever in the novel and assumed it would never be published. In September 2009, I got a call from the editor saying they wanted to publish the novel. I think I dropped the phone. I could not believe my ears.
It's a cliche to say that art imitates life, but how could it be otherwise? Art comes from life because it has no other source. But why did I write a novel about parental grief? Why was the main character a middle-aged man whose 27-year-old son dies suddenly? Did I somehow know Amelia would die at the same age? Why did I write a scene where Paul mistakes a young man on the street for his dead son, and then have the same experience four years later with a young woman who looked like Amelia?
These unanswerable questions have been ringing in my mind for the past two years. I don't believe in the supernatural, and I certainly claim no psychic powers. This fall, when I promote the novel, I'll likely be asked questions about why and how I came to write it. I will try to answer honestly, but the truth, as I see it now, is complicated and unsettling. The novel, of course, is dedicated to the memory of Amelia.
Hold Me Now
Published by Freehand Books.
"a gripping story by a talented writer." Michael Winter
Reviews for Hold Me Now
"Hold Me Now is a potent and poignant examination of a father's grief."
VANCOUVER SUN
"Gauer builds a psychological study of unwavering breadth and depth ... The story is borne along to some extent on the crime-and-punishment drama, but much more on the shifts of the interior journey. Brenner's anger and sorrow feed on each other. He takes stupid risks that unexpectedly pay off. It's fascinating at every turn and it leads to a beautifully rendered catharsis. Have a handkerchief handy."
GLOBE AND MAIL
"[Hold Me Now] is an examination of a truly tortured soul. This story is so masterfully told."
CBC, ALL POINTS WEST
Stephen talks about Hold Me Now
Background to the novel
Hold Me Now tells the sad story of a Vancouver lawyer whose world collapses one day in 2001 when his 27-year-old gay son is beaten to death in Stanley Park. I wrote the first draft of the book in the summer of 2004, when I was halfway through the MFA creative writing program at UBC. The genesis of the book is a little murky; for some reason I'd become obsessively interested in the idea of revenge after a violent crime. If someone kills your loved one, surely you would want revenge for the killing? Surely you would feel such anger and hatred towards the perpetrator of the crime that you might be tempted to attack or kill him?
But in fact this never occurs. I researched dozens of violent crimes and couldn't find a single example of revenge. In one case in British Columbia, the wife of a man murdered during a house party argument (he'd gone next door to tell some rowdy teenagers to pipe down) actually toured the province with the killer, delivering cautionary talks about the dangers of teenage drinking.
I wrote a couple of short stories that touched briefly on the idea of revenge, and then, searching for an idea for a novel-length project required for the thesis, came across the Aaron Webster story. Webster was a 40-year-old gay man in Vancouver who was beaten to death in Stanley Park by four drunk young men wielding bats and golf clubs. I used the murder as the key plot point at the beginning of the novel. My novel told the story of a fictional middle-aged lawyer, Paul Brenner, trying to come to terms with the death of his son after the beating death in Stanley Park. Brenner is not particularly likable; he's a business lawyer, uptight, rigid, a conventional man who prefers to indulge in risky, self-destructive behaviour rather than deal honestly and openly with the avalanche of grief, anger and despair he feels.
I wrote the novel quickly, in less than three months, writing for two or three hours every morning before going to work. As I remember it now, the writing came easily for me. Joan Didion has described fiction writing as "transcribing a vivid dream" and that is precisely my memory of those mornings in 2004. My thesis advisor suggested revisions and I made them, and I finished a final draft by the spring of 2005, when I presented the book as my thesis and was awarded the masters degree. I sent the novel out to a dozen agents and publishers but everyone passed. No one trashed the book (the publishing world is too polite for that) but no one liked it very much either. So I gave up on it, and any notion that I might be a published novelist in my mid-fifties.
My partner and I moved back to Toronto in the spring of 2006 to help care for our chronically ill grand-daughter, Amelia, who'd had a kidney transplant in 1997. The transplanted kidney was beginning to fail as the disease she suffered from, Henoch Schonlein Purpura, continued to attack her body. Amelia needed a new kidney, and so in June of the following year, 2007, I went to Toronto General Hospital and donated my left kidney. Both operations went well, and Amelia seemed much better with the new "Gauer kidney". After a short recovery at home, I went back to work.
But Amelia's body was failing and the "Gauer kidney" couldn't save her. She died suddenly, in her sleep, the next spring, at the age of 27. In an eerie and completely unreal series of events that followed Amelia's death, I went through some of the same experiences that Brenner underwent. The emotions were similar too: surprise and shock, confusion, grief and more grief, grief piled so high in front of you that you can't see the way ahead. The grieving came in a complex pattern. Amelia's mother, Alison, was grieving for the horrible and unjust death of her daughter, a happy and optimistic young woman who wanted only to lead a normal and healthy life. My partner grieved for her daughter and her grand-daughter. I grieved for all three.
In the late fall of 2008 I re-connected with a writer friend from the UBC program at a reading in Toronto and with her help got a copy of the Hold Me Now manuscript into the hands of her editor at Freehand Books, small publisher in Calgary. I still had no faith whatsoever in the novel and assumed it would never be published. In September 2009, I got a call from the editor saying they wanted to publish the novel. I think I dropped the phone. I could not believe my ears.
It's a cliche to say that art imitates life, but how could it be otherwise? Art comes from life because it has no other source. But why did I write a novel about parental grief? Why was the main character a middle-aged man whose 27-year-old son dies suddenly? Did I somehow know Amelia would die at the same age? Why did I write a scene where Paul mistakes a young man on the street for his dead son, and then have the same experience four years later with a young woman who looked like Amelia?
These unanswerable questions have been ringing in my mind for the past two years. I don't believe in the supernatural, and I certainly claim no psychic powers. This fall, when I promote the novel, I'll likely be asked questions about why and how I came to write it. I will try to answer honestly, but the truth, as I see it now, is complicated and unsettling. The novel, of course, is dedicated to the memory of Amelia.