The Hole Show
Maya Merrick
October 2007
ISBN 1-894994-25-6 / 978-1-894994-25-5
Novel
6x9 inches, 360 pages
$17 CDN / U.S.

In 1972 four outcasts meet in Montreal to form a controversial theatre troupe which stages a Halloween bacchanal on Mount Royal called The Hole Show. Hicklin, the collector, leaves Vancouver under traumatic circumstances to live as a bohemian on the streets of a city caught in the midst of political upheaval. Billy, the gender-bending butcher boy, quits the farm and changes his name to Beau. Dahlia is the Westmount ballerina who severs all contact with her previous life to take on the emotionally frigid persona of Dolly. Finally there is Luce, the sassy teenage runaway who is a mystery to them all.

Following the critical success of her debut novel, Sextant, Maya Merrick’s The Hole Show is a multi-layered, finely crafted, provocative novel about four characters struggling to cope with their own personal transformations.

 "The Hole Show is Maya Merrick’s second novel and is a toothsome trawl through Montreal vérité. There are freaks, deformities, and what used to be called clubfoots, all in a Henry Darger-esque jamboree. It is the world of Sextant, Merrick’s first book, plus a little of the historical sweep of Michel Tremblay complete with silverfish crawling up from the drains. The Hole Show really crackles across its 360 pages."
— Montreal Review of Books

Maya Merrick’s first novel, Sextant, was just released in French by the respected Montreal publisher Les Éditions du Boréal. Since publishing her first novel she has been an invited guest at Word on the Street and Canzine in Toronto, The Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver, and The Pilot in Montreal. Her work has appeared in Geist, Matrix, and excerpt from The Hole Show appeared in The Portable Conundrum. She continues to work as a barmaid in Montreal.