Profile of Barbara Gowdy on Famous Like Me

Barbara Gowdy, born in 1950 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, is a novelist. She was nominated for a Governor General's Award for her novel Mister Sandman in 1995 and her novel White Bone in 1998, the latter also nominated for the Giller Prize.

She is married to poet Christopher Dewdney...

The title short story of her 1992 collection, "We So Seldom Look On Love," was the inspiration for the 1996 Canadian independent film, "Kissed." The short story is based on the poem, "Ode to Necrophilia."

Authors such as Alice Munro and Carol Shields look at the everyday, but the bulk of Gowdy's work reflects upon the opposite. Gowdy's stories look at the extreme - the strange, the abnormal - and she is able to make her characters relatable, poignant. The main character in "We So Seldom Look On Love" is involved in necrophilia. Another story has a man that has two heads. A third story in that collection involves masturbation and voyeurism. Her novel, "The White Bone," is from the perspective of an elephant. Yet, her work is not about the shock value, but finding what is universal in us, as readers, to each of her characters.

Suggested (selected) reading order: "The Romantic;" "Mister Sandman;" "Falling Angels;" "We So Seldom Look On Love;" "The White Bone"

Bibliography

• 1988 - Through the Green Valley
• 1989 - Falling Angels
• 1992 - We So Seldom Look On Love
• 1995 - Mister Sandman
• 1999 - The White Bone
• 2002 - The Romantic

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