Shari Lapena takes the wit of David Sedaris and the outrageousness of Douglas Coupland to create a dark, hilarious and wildly inventive contemporary comedy about how the past can come back to haunt you. Literally.
In Things Go Flying, Harold Walker is desperately average and listless at mid-life, stemming in part from the abrupt death of his one-time best friend, Tom. Harold's wife Audrey, an increasingly frustrated housewife and mother to their two teenage sons, is a control freak silently harbouring an explosive secret. Things go flying in the Walker household when Harold's long-deceased mother comes back to haunt them. He finds he has her gift for opening the door to the past-and if there was ever a gift he wanted to return, it's this one! Audrey is similarly terrified-how is she to safeguard her secret now? If she can't control this world, how is she to control the next one? And how will she protect her good china? Harold, who has made a practice of avoiding things all his life, must confront two problems-how to find meaning in this life, and how to come to grips with the mostly terrifying idea that life just might go on forever!
Shari Lapena was a lawyer and English teacher before turning to writing fiction. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and in 2004 she won the Great Toronto Literary Project. Things Go Flying was shortlisted for the 2009 Sunburst Award. She has been featured in The Dalhousie Review, The Globe and Mail and is an alumnus of the Humber School for Writers. She makes her home in Toronto. Please visit sharilapena.com, or follow Shari on Twitter at @sharilapena.