You Haven't Changed a Bit

Through mesmerizing forays into characterization, voicing, and narrative technique, and with a clean economy of style rare even in short fiction, Astrid Blodgett conjures the moral and existential freight of her fully fledged characters in the throes of realistic moments. From the fascinatingly unhinged hero of "Getting the Cat," to the dreamy survey of prairie landscape and childhood experience of "New Summer Dresses," to the fatal irony of "Ice Break," readers will be hooked from first sentences and carried along on crisp prose. You Haven't Changed a Bit shimmers with the energy of a first book while affording readers the subtlety, complexity, and range of an accomplished master of the genre. Full-fledged characters positively crackle in the deliciously realistic situations of these thirteen short stories. Back Cover: Astrid Blodgett's stories are acutely rendered picture-poems of the way the world is. The beauty, the shock, the frissons of love and dread-it's all there. A compelling new voice. - Caroline Adderson "Uncle Rick's there, Dad, look," Janie said. "Where? For Christ's sake, where?" Dad said. He drove forward slowly. I looked too. We'd passed ten or twelve men, some of them in pairs, hunched over holes. They were dark shapes in the white-grey globe. I couldn't see Uncle Rick either. "Keep going, Dad, he's out there, I can see him," Janie said. "Past that guy with the dog." Dad drove on. And then I heard a loud crack, like a gun going off, and the front of the truck tipped forward. It was like those dreams where everything is in slow motion and sounds are muffled and all the people have gone and only you are left. The truck tipped forward, and then the front wheels were in the water. -from "Ice Break" Front Flap: Through mesmerizing forays into characterization, voicing, and narrative technique, and with a clean economy of style rare even in short fiction, Astrid Blodgett conjures the moral and existential freight of her fully fledged characters in the throes of realistic moments. From the fascinatingly unhinged hero of "Getting the Cat," to the dreamy survey of prairie landscape and childhood experience of "New Summer Dresses," to the fatal irony of "Ice Break," readers will be hooked from first sentences and carried along on crisp prose. You Haven't Changed a Bit shimmers with the energy of a first book while affording readers the subtlety, complexity, and range of an accomplished master of the genre. In You Haven't Changed a Bit, Astrid Blodgett lights a fuse. She takes us deep into the country where alfalfa brushes against the skin, where ice and sky merge, where people we've known since childhood live. Powerful fiction has a way of detonating after a book has been set down-these stories snap and burn. - Anne Simpson Back Flap: Astrid Blodgett has an MA in English from the University of Alberta and has received a number of literary awards, including a City of Edmonton Seven Arts Club Scholarship and James Patrick Folinsbee writing prizes from the University of Alberta. Her stories have been read on CBC Radio's Alberta Anthology and published in Meltwater: Fiction and Poetry from The Banff Centre for the Arts, The Journey Prize Stories 24, Alberta Views, The Antigonish Review, and Prairie Fire. Astrid lives in Edmonton with her family. Astrid Blodgett was announced as one of the 12 contributors to The Journey Prize Stories 24. Congratulations! http://www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize/posts/10151067884019227 "You Haven't Changed a Bit, a compilation of 13 stories, took 10 years to complete. For the Literary Cocktails reading, Blodgett has picked Ice Break, a story about a family that goes ice fishing on Lake Wabamun. They never start fishing because as they drive on the ice, it cracks and breaks." St. Albert Gazette, April 20, 2013 "These thirteen stories are a breath of fresh air. Blodgett's writing is clean and spare. The stories are intelligently written, and great care has clearly gone into crafting them. Detai