Beauty is a Liar
Valerie Joy Kalynchuk

METRO SERIES
May 2006
ISBN 1-894994-15-9  
4.25x7 inches • 112 pages
Novel
$14.95 CDN/US

Valerie Joy Kalynchuk's Beauty is a Liar is the follow-up to her first Conundrum book, All Day Breakfast, which the Globe and Mail called "a disarming stream-of-consciousness novel". It received rave reviews for its brutal honesty. Her new book, which blends poetic verse, staccato prose and collage, veers back and forth between Winnipeg and Montreal, exploring a young woman's troubled past and eventual redemption. Kalynchuk gives us an anti-nostalgic take on childhood, filled with ballerina prodigies and views of canola fields blunted and defeated against the rain. Her heroine perpetually loses her bus pass, receives lessons from an ordained blob of dough, and remembers the time she watched a prairie storm approach from miles away.

"Kalynchuk has one of the most unique literary voices I have ever encountered."
– Jon Paul Fiorentino

"Valerie's stories do not so much follow plot lines as naturally conform to the grim poetry of greasy fingers, violence and broken homes."
– Broken Pencil

"A veritable symphony of dysfunction, conveyed in first-person semi-stream-of-consciousness vignettes laced with black wit."
– MRB

"Exploring the schism between sunny social conventions and the narrator's penchant for darker sights and sounds, Kalynchuk's vignettes break with tradition, both in content and style."
– MRB

Valerie Joy Kalynchuk is a regular contributor to Matrix. Her work has also appeared in Geist, The Original Canadian City Dweller's Almanac, Fish Piss, Career Suicide, and You and Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing. Originally from Winnipeg, she currently lives in Montreal.