CBC and Spotify - 7 Tangles with The Mercy Journals

Here are links and a few choice quotes from recent reviewers and Q&As

CBC SUMMER READING LIST

Great company - Louise Erdrich, Matti Freeman, Emma Straub, Alissa York, Carmen Aguirre:

http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/05/cbc-books-summer-2016-reading-list.html

Excerpt from Q&A (linked below) with CBC Books' Jane van Koeverden ("Casper's fearless new novel"):

"Literature is the air we breathe. It's the background for our species in our culture. It contributes to change by changing the air we breathe, changing what's in our background sense of what is known, what is normal, what is experienced, what we're conscious of. It can galvanize change over a generation or two. What literature does, I think in some ways better than any other medium, is it takes you inside another mind and expands in a whole world in that character. Once you have that empathetic understanding of another character, it doesn't leave you, even if you don't remember the plot."

http://www.cbc.ca/books/2016/05/claudia-casper-the-mercy-journals.html

CONVERSATIONS:

David Gutowski's innovative blog where writers create and discuss a music playlist that relates to their books, (a playlist is simultaneously created on Spotify). The songs for The Mercy Journals I discuss are: Send in the Clowns, Mack the Knife, Take This Waltz, White Wedding - Part 1, Radar Love, Fado Portugues, In for the Kill (Skream remix), Come as You Are.

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2016/05/book_notes_clau_2.html

I talk with Caroline about writing, the wreckage of the world, the origins of The Mercy Journals, the quality of mercy, the research, memory. "What we worry about most with regards to death, after our actual non-existence, is not being remembered. Is being erased from the planet."

http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.ca/2016/05/claudia-casper-talks-about-mercy.html

ONLINE REVIEWS:

Justus Joseph from Eliott Bay Book Company for Shelf Awareness (linked below): "Through the distressed voice of Allen, Casper creates a dystopian future that appears uncomfortably familiar as it echoes our own fears for the future." and "Both benevolent and autocratic, OneWorld enforces severe measures for humanity's survival, but can't dispel the tension between the old world's promise of prosperity and the new world's uncertainty."

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=507#m8862

Christine Canfield for Foreword Reviews: "Many dystopian novels feel distant, taking place in a time far from now, but Claudia Casper’s The Mercy Journals feels like it’s just on the other side of the door."

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-mercy-journals/

Shane Jardine for The Arched Doorway (linked below): "The Mercy Journals is a dark and gritty psychological thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. It’s also one of those books that stays with you long after you have finished reading it. For days after after I finished the last page I would find my mind drifting off my task at work or whatever I was doing and back to the book. It didn’t take me long to decide it was time to read the book at least one more time, and I think I may have enjoyed it more the second time than I did the first."

http://archeddoorway.com/2016/05/22/the-mercy-journals-by-claudia-casper/