Bookworm, no. 14
Fiction by Nick Bantock. Non-fiction by Quentin Casey. A cover artist Q&A. Inside the November issue.
Bedtime Stories
The Corset & The Jellyfish: A Conundrum of Drabbles
Nick Bantock
Tachyon
216 pages, hardcover and ebook
The latest short story collection by the veteran artist and writer Nick Bantock, The Corset & The Jellyfish recalls a Grimm’s fairytale crossed with a Salvador Dali painting. Though much of the action occurs in a fantastic alternate universe, many readers will find these surreal tales endearing, their morals achingly familiar.
In the introduction, Bantock inserts himself into his own narrative. On his doorstep lies a strange manuscript: 100 drawings accompanied by 100 stories—each 100 words long. These drabbles range from delightful to depressing, enchanting to horrifying. The title story concerns a jellyfish who tattoos “a pair of tiny concentric circles” on a woman’s arm and leg. Her workaholic husband fails to notice the “delicately inked symbols,” but her lover spots them and, “declaring them intoxicating, ravaged her a second time.” In the playful “Looking Back,” Professor Archelo Cavarn walks around campus backwards to remind her students that “the past should always be observed.” And then there’s poor Clarissa. Unwilling to kick her nail-biting habit, the petulant child “ate her fingers and her hand, followed by her arm and then the rest of her right down to her toenails.”
There’s a side quest, too. Bantock challenges “perceptive readers with a curious mind” to create an additional drabble by selecting one word from each tale sequentially. He gives the instructions in verse:
Bound and snagged this knot intwined,
A conundrum wrought in tales you find.
Softly, softly, mindful monkey, tread with finite care,
By elliptic line a path is drawn twixt circle, hat, and square.
It’s a fitting finale to this quirky little book, sure to charm eccentrics and codebreakers alike.
—Sarah O’Connor
Mr. Moneybags
Net Worth: John Risley, Clearwater, and the Building of a Billion-Dollar Empire
Quentin Casey
Nimbus
376 pages, hardcover and ebook
In Net Worth, the journalist Quentin Casey details the exploits of John Risley, the irascible business tycoon from Halifax who is “reportedly—though not actually—a billionaire.” As readers will come to find, Risley has an appetite for “big bets and large debts,” living by a carefree motto: “If I made it, I’ll spend it.”
The meticulous biography starts with the “shitty little lobster business” that Risley launched with his brother-in-law, Colin MacDonald, in the late 1970s. Clearwater transformed the seafood industry with temperature-controlled lobster habitats, which allowed the crustaceans to be marketed year-round. (The partners sold the business in 2020 to a holdings company that includes a coalition of Mi’kmaw First Nations for $1 billion.) Another of Risley’s ventures, Ocean’s Nutrition, turned “smelly fish oil into a tasteless, odorless powder” that’s rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids for infusion into products like pizza sauce, chocolate, and baby food. By the time that company sold for $540 million in 2012, Risley had already undertaken another enterprise: reshaping the Caribbean’s archaic telecom market. Starting in 2004, he and a few business partners—including the billionaire philanthropist Michael-Lee Chin—worked to turn a bankrupt network into the powerhouse Columbus Communications. The company recently sold for $3.3 billion (U.S.), making it the most lucrative of Risley’s many ventures.
Readers looking for a salacious tell-all about boardroom brawls and intimate personal details may be disappointed. Instead, the book’s many sources, including Risley’s colleagues, family members, and investors, paint a balanced picture of a man whose ambition they admire but whose behaviour has been frequently “crazy.” Alongside this nuanced exploration of a multi-faceted personality, Net Worth offers a thorough survey of business decisions that helped shape Nova Scotia’s past and continue to influence its future.
—Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy
Cover artist Q&A: Blair Kelly
How long have you been an illustrator?
I have been an illustrator for about twenty-three years—since graduating from college. It hasn’t always been my sole source of income, but I just recently got back to it full time.
Where did you get the idea for this cover?
It came from the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Kyle Wyatt. He suggested that the cover could have a fall theme, considering it was the November issue. So I sent him a few roughs, and he picked this idea. My goal was to create a fun, eye-catching image that is a before and after. The front, where the dog jumps into the mound of leaves, is the “before.” The “after” is a bit more unexpected: it shows what could possibly be happening inside the pile. It’s neat because the front works as a stand-alone cover, but the twist reveals itself when you look at the back.
There’s a lot of negative space in the image. Is that an unconventional approach for you?
There is! It’s a newer technique, inspired by Kyle’s suggestion that the background be white. It allowed the colours and shapes to pop off the page. I really feel negative space is such an important part of image-making that sometimes gets overlooked. After all this time, I still love a good collaboration that pushes me in new directions.
Inside the November Issue
“Vanity, thy name is author.” Cecily Ross tries poetry on for size.
R. H. Thomson’s By the Ghost Light: Wars, Memory, and Families, reviewed by Shazia Hafiz Ramji.
“As mazy as the routes its subjects explored.” Michael Ledger-Lomas reviews Ken McGoogan’s Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery.
And much more!
Bantock's short stories look very intriguing and love love love the Q&A!