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Award winning short story collection that captures pivotal moments—of childhood, adolescence, parenthood, and beyond–in the under-appreciated world of women. Disparate decades, genders, and narrative voices woven together by themes of sex, death, guilt, social prejudice.
And love, always love.
A girl discovers a fear of heights as her parents’ marriage unravels; a thirty-something venture fund manager frets over his daughter’s paternity; an orphan whose hands kill whatever they touch is accused of homophobia; a suicidal daycare worker has a very bad day; a mother of two can only bear to consider abortion in the second person; the wife of a retirement-aged professor finds him unconscious near his computer. The 14 stories of The Meaning Of Children speak to all who—though aware the world can be a very dark place—can’t help but long for redemption.
Winner of the David Adams Richards Prize; Top 10 List of the CBC – Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers’ Choice Contest, and many others.
A keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children as well as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces that exist between the everyday events of life. A work with a brilliant sense of story…Magical, and so refreshing for me to read. I absolutely loved it and I hope it goes on to do marvelous things. Yours is a luminous talent.
~JoAnne Soper-Cook, Author and Judge, 2010 David Adams Richards Prize
Loved your book; read it in one sitting. Each [story] is either told by a child, or about a child. And it’s interesting because I think depending on the age of the person reading it, you relate to different ones. But especially to feminists, growing up with it, wrestling with our beliefs, and whether it worked out or not… a lot of women in this book are trapped. We were trapped by what we were brought up to believe. And then we’re trapped by the marriages we find ourselves in, and the children we have…But on the other hand, each story ends with a certain resolve. There’s that sense of okay this is my situation, but. And that’s what the meaning of children is. It’s about hope. It’s about the future.
~Mutsumi Takahashi, Anchor, CTV News Montreal
A collection of 14 short stories which covers the range of experience from the point of view of children, mums, and also aging parents as well. It’s all there in this lovely little book, short stories about life in a family that might just resemble yours. I wanted to congratulate you on the publication of this book and I hope it goes far far afield for you. A wonderful gift for mother’s day, perhaps more long lived than the usual cut flowers.
~Anne Lagacé Dowson, CJAD Radio journalist
This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.
~Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail http://bit.ly/ex4zD8
Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.
~Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, and Regina Leader Post
Haunting and powerfully emotive, drawing on the subtleties of childhood, youth and parenthood that undermine us in strange and unexpected ways. Your writing is polished and mature, something I am always in awe of and why I got into publishing to begin with.
~Meghan Macdonald, Transatlantic Literary Agency
Counter-intuitive to the title, for me these stories resonate with the sad truth of being a grownup. Life is that damn hard and just-under-the-surface tension saturates our existence. But the kids, they know what’s going on…Akerman nails that sorrow, highlights it with unexpected humour, credits our resilience and almost never skips a beat.
~Chris Benjamin, Author of Drive-by Saviours, on Goodreads (4 stars)
