Description
MAY 1, 2025. PRE-ORDER NOW.
Every year, nearly 2 million babies are stillborn around the world; in Canada, one in every 125 pregnancies ends in a stillbirth.
It is September 1991 and Lydia has just given birth to a stillborn child in Montreal. As she and her husband grapple with the after effects, their relationship comes under intense scrutiny. Lydia, the daughter of poor Greek immigrants, fears she has failed her husband as well as his more prosperous Greek family. Their marriage had been shaky from the start and the stillbirth seriously threatens its very foundations, including John’s commitment to fidelity.
Tunes for Dancing Bears plunges deeply into the complexities of grief and the many challenges of being a woman. A touching story of family, loss, immigration, hope, and the real meaning of for better or for worse.
Irena Karafilly is an award-winning author of several acclaimed books and of numerous stories, poems, and articles. She has published in literary and mainstream magazines, as well as in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Her short stories have won Canada’s National Magazine Award and the CBC Literary Award. Her latest novel, Arrested Song, was recently published in the UK by Legend Press and was Finalist for the QWF 2024 Paragraphe-Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. She divides her time between Montreal and Athens.
REVIEWS & PRAISE
“I was a neophyte mother when I chanced to see a dishevelled-looking woman sobbing on a Montreal hospital’s maternity ward. She was waiting for the elevator, leaning against her husband as though her legs could not be trusted to carry the weight of her own body. I, too, was about to be discharged, delirious with the joy of having given birth in my 30s to a perfectly healthy baby. I did not yet know that the weeping woman had given birth to a stillborn child, but a chatty nursing student speaking in hushed tones soon satisfied my curiosity. The bereaved woman’s face haunted me––until I finally surrendered and sat down to write about her plight.”
From an interview with the author on All Lit Up.
“A novel that doesn’t shy away from difficulties.”
Sonali Karnak in conversation with Irena Karafilly
All In a Weekend, CBC Radio
“The story is told without sentiment and without judgment. There is simplicity of style and an observational quality to the entire work. As we read the shattering beginnings to the journey of Lydia and John, we wonder what the outcome might be in a year’s time. A well-researched and compelling story.” Anne Smith-Nochasak, The Miramichi Reader
“This eloquent, impressionistic novel evokes the devastating void left by a stillborn child.” Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
“If hope is the thing that perches in the soul, as Emily Dickinson wrote, so does loss as stubbornly, and it’s an absence that rings with both spoken and unspoken power in Irena Karafilly’s intense, haunting novel.” Julian Evans, author of Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War
“Tunes for Dancing Bears explores an avalanche of emotions in this novel about grief and marriage. Irena Karafilly takes us into a world of ineffable loss. This book will move you.” Kim Echlin, author of The Disappeared and Speak, Silence
“Irena Karafilly has written a beautiful and moving addition to the literature of loss and grief.” William Kotzwinkle, author of Swimmer in the Secret Sea
Praise for Arrested Song
“I enjoyed this book immensely. Karafilly succeeds brilliantly where I had decided not to even try. A very accomplished novel.” Louis de Bernieres
“A gripping, powerfully evocative chronicle of Greek island life. . .. Nothing is black and white here, least of all her feisty, iconoclastic heroine . . . hard to put this book down.” Sofka Zinovieff
“Arrested Song is a wonderful novel, fully realized and absorbing.” Anna Porter
“An epic, page-turning story, of longing and bravery. Arrested Song is a must read.” Nadia Marks
“Beautifully written and riveting.” Carol P. Christ
“Arrested Song is a highly accomplished, thoroughly researched, and compelling read.” Dean Kalimniou
“One of the best novels I?ve read about modern Greece . . .. A truly original work.” Diana Farr Louis
“A beautifully written, superbly detailed and addictive historical novel mostly set on the island of Lesvos. I savoured every word.” Peter Barber.
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