Looking Good and Having a Good Time
Fawn Parker
64 pages
First edition, second printing
Cover art: Louise Reimer
ISBN 9780993946455
Fall 2015
We stayed in a house by the water with one bedroom and a view of the beach. The floor of our bedroom tilted inward. It tilted further inward every day, I could have sworn. No matter how many times we got up in the night to push our beds apart, they would be touching by morning. God forbid I dropped my hairbrush and it rolled so deep into the floor-crevice that it may as well have been lost at sea.
Cohabitation with John Travolta; a never-ending Canadian Shield; the ghost of Steve Jobs wailing from a cracked iPhone 3; the stories in Parker’s Looking Good and Having a Good Time are sharp, delightful, surprising, and, most importantly, never boring. Parker’s characters engage awkwardly with the world around them, while her vivid imagination and sense of humor allow them to reach dizzying heights.
Praise
“These four stories etch out the topography of modern estrangement with a diamond-cutter’s tools. Wry, surprising, and seemingly effortless, Parker’s prose offers a glimpse into an uncanny world where the familiar slow-dances with the absurd and comes away with sweaty—and indelible—handprints on its jeans. An assured and remarkable debut.”
– Anna Leventhal, author of Sweet Affliction
Press
Broken Pencil – “Parker’s writing is characterized by a very dry brand of humour that takes you by surprise. Looking Good and Having a Good Time is an energetic read.”
Inside the Frozen Mammoth (Podcast)
Montreal Review of Books – “Parker makes fun of her generation, and of contemporary literature. Magical realism has arrived in millennial Montreal.”
Excerpts
Cosmonauts Avenue – Looking Good and Having a Good Time
Queen Mob’s Tea House – Vacation With My Mother
