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    Malagash
    Malagash
    Malagash
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Malagash

    By Joey Comeau

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A precisely crafted, darkly humorous portrait of a family in mourning

    Sunday’s father is dying of cancer. They’ve come home to Malagash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia, so he can die where he grew up. Her mother and her brother are both devastated. But devastated isn’t good enough. Devastated doesn’t fix anything. Sunday has a plan.

    She’s started recording everything her father says. His boring stories. His stupid jokes. Everything. She’s recording every single “I love you” right alongside every “Could we turn the heat up in here?” It’s all important.

    Because Sunday is writing a computer virus. A computer virus that will live secretly on the hard drives of millions of people all over the world. A computer virus that will think her father’s thoughts and say her father’s words. She has thousands of lines of code to write. Cryptography to understand. Exploits to test. She doesn’t have time to be sad. Her father is going to live forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9781773051109

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    Reviews for Malagash

    4/5

    21 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      My word, what did I miss in this?! Everyone else loves it, but I just didn't even though the setting only a few miles from here had set me up to really get into it.
    • 4/5
      How do you take a subject that has been written about many times before. And make it new and fresh?Read this book, and you will see why readers are responding so positively to just such a book. A father dying, asking to die in the place he was raised, Nova Scotia. So his family who loves him dearly, wanting to honor his last wishes, does just that. Father in hospital, mother and daughter, young son attempt to fill his last days with humor, and a great deal of love. His daughter who will miss him dearly goes even further. She has plans, ideas and a way to make her father's last words last forever.A sadly but beautiful look at a family that is so filled with love, even during this trying and devastating time. The book is starkly written, short matter of fact paragraphs and yet they convey so much emotion. This is a family that cold be torn apart by the death of a loved one but instead due to the mind of an amazing daughter have a chance to survive and even to thrive. The cover is absolutely gorgeous, covers do attract, but sometimes what is within can disappoint. This one lives up to the the beauty of the cover by giving the readers a wonderful and heartfelt story.ARC from Netgalley.
    • 4/5
      A beautiful story of a family's (especially one kid's) reaction to the father's terminal cancer. It's sad but also beautiful, realistic, and interesting. It looks at how we try to keep a piece of people with us - a ghost, if you will.
    • 4/5
      I'd never heard of Joey Comeau or his latest book, Malagash. Generally, I don't go for small books—I like 'em thick. But one look at the premise and I knew this was a story I wanted to read: Sunday's father is dying of cancer … She's started recording everything her father says … Because Sunday is writing a computer virus. A computer virus that will live secretly on the hard drives of millions … A computer virus that will think her father's thoughts and say her father's words … Her father is going to live forever.BAM! I was sold.Malagash is a strong novel (it may border on being novella length). It has an original premise, is full of believable characters, and is such a quick read. Despite my inclination to favor larger books, I think the brevity works for this story. Could I have spent more time with Sunday's family? Yes, they were enjoyable company, but I think we get to know enough of them to understand their abundant intrigues and quirks. This understanding of the characters comes from an experienced handling of the family's interactions with one another—each filled with meaning and subtlety.At one point during the story, we are treated to a magic trick and, whether it was Comeau's intention or not, I believe Malagash is in itself a bit of a magic trick. An illusion. Look here at this thing in my right hand, the author seems to be saying, while I manipulate reality with my left. The magic is in the premise—a dying father's voice living forever through a computer virus—anyone reading this story is probably doing so for the promised magic of that description. But while you weren't looking, something more significant happened in the life of Sunday, our protagonist, particularly in regards to her relationship with her brother. The magic of this story isn't in Sunday's computer virus or even in the life and death of her father, but in the burgeoning interactions of those left behind.Malagash is a story about death, but it is more so a snapshot of life in motion. It is concise, but never abrupt. It is heartbreaking, but never for a second does it lose its spirit, the tremendous spirit of an inspirational and exceptional family.

    Book preview

    Malagash - Joey Comeau

    ALSO BY JOEY COMEAU

    FICTION

    Lockpick Pornography

    It’s Too Late to Say I’m Sorry

    We Are Become Pals (with Jess Fink)

    Overqualified

    One Bloody Thing After Another

    Bible Camp Bloodbath

    The Girl Who Couldn’t Come

    The Complete Lockpick Pornography

    The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved

    Overqualifieder

    A SOFTER WOLD BOOKS (with Emily Horne)

    Truth and Beauty Bombs

    Second Best Isn’t So Bad

    Everybody Gets Got

    Let’s Do Something Wrong

    Anatomy of Melancholy

    CONTENTS

    >_ one

    >_ two

    >_ three

    >_ four

    About the Author

    Copyright

    C:\MALAGASH>book.exe

    for my mother, Karen Byers

    -- ONE --

    >_

    A weight will lift. My father has a big cup of crushed ice that he keeps tilting side to side. It hasn’t melted enough yet. A weight will lift, he says.

    He’s tired of having to say I know in that reassuring voice, again and again. I know, Sunday. I know. So he’s found this new way of saying it. A weight will lift. A leaf will fall. Fresh white snow will blanket this whole sleepy town.

    That’s very poetic, I tell him.

    He tilts his crushed ice again.

    Sunday, you are my daughter, he says, holding out his hand for mine. I take it. You are my daughter, he says, and it breaks my heart that the day has finally come for you to learn this hard and simple truth.

    His face is very serious, which is one of the ways my father smiles. He pauses, as though he’s searching for just the right words. He isn’t searching, of course. Nothing comes easier to my father than teasing me.

    The truth is that we, each and every one of us, get old and frail, Sunday. We, each and every one of us, lie down in the winter of our lives, he tilts his ice, to make way for the baby skunks and the excitable little porcupines which are born in the spring. He says this in his hospital bed, wearing a flimsy bathrobe. His face is deadly earnest. He thinks he is so funny. Poking their heads up through the frost, because it is their time now, my darling daughter. It is their time now to glitter in the sun. Squeezing my hand like on TV.

    That’s very poetic, I tell him again.

    You said that already, my father says.

    "Very poetic," I say.

    It’s my own fault for saying the same thing every day. I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to die.

    Snow will blanket the town, he says, solemnly.

    Snow in the middle of July? I say. Oh wow, like in a metaphor?

    Sometimes the winter comes earlier than we want, my father says. Sometimes the sky—

    Okay, enough with the— I stop myself. This is infuriating. It is meant to be infuriating. My father smiles at the crack in my voice, takes a sip from his melting crushed ice. And once again, I can see that I am arguing against death itself. A stubborn child. A little girl. I don’t want a weight to lift. I don’t want a leaf to fall.

    It doesn’t matter how stupid my father’s arguments are, how clichéd his metaphors. He’s on the winning side. The cancer is everywhere. In two weeks, maybe a month, we’ll have reached the end of this twisting garden path. And he will prove me wrong. A weight will lift. A leaf will fall. Fresh white snow will blanket this whole stupid town.

    >_

    I thought Malagash would be a small town, but it is not even that. One long road, a twisting red paved loop around the north shore of Nova Scotia. There’s a tractor sitting in a field. A dirt bike leaning up against a shed. We pass a pen of llamas, who look bored as hell. The Atlantic Ocean itself comes right up to drive along beside us. Then it slips away.

    In the front seat I have my phone out again. The glass and metal object that was once my phone. I’ve got nobody left to call. Which is a relief, because I’ve got no energy left to pretend. There are only so many condolences a body can sit through. Only so many updates on what you’ve missed before you don’t miss it.

    I use my phone to record my mother. The thunk of potholes. Shaky video glimpses of the cottages slipping past. The waif humming to himself. The trees rushing. It records everything it can while we drive through my father’s hometown for the first time. Prim little houses spaced for privacy, each sitting on its own beautiful view of the sea. There’s an old general store with a dying neon PIZZA sign.

    My mother’s voice plays over the mud. The mud stretches out to the green-grey ocean.

    "A community is the polite term, she says. An elephants’ graveyard for people. Laughter in her voice, like when she teases us. This place is family to her. Neither Simon nor I have ever been here, but my mom and dad had a whole life. They lived here together, before Simon or I were born. With the phone up to the window, I record what I can. There is a church, a vineyard, an abandoned salt mine somewhere beneath us, a bible camp, a wharf where lobster fishermen once set out to sea. Maybe they still do? Another wharf. Another. Wharves always look abandoned. There’s a real graveyard on both sides of the church. Those plots are as far as some of these people ever go," my mother says as we pass.

    Some facts my mother remembers:

    The road is red like this from clay. They used what they had. Look how red the dirt is, too.

    When the tide is out, you can walk forever and only ever get up to your waist.

    "Those cottages there belonged to your father’s aunt Edie and uncle Harry. Separate cottages right next door to one another. Isn’t that perfect?

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