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LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION
A QUILL & QUIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Award-winning novelist Joan Thomas blends fact and fiction, passion and science in this stunning novel set in nineteenth-century Lyme Regis, England--the seaside town that is the setting of both The French Lieutenant's Woman and Jane Austen's Persuasion.
More than forty years before the publication of The Origin of Species, twelve-year-old Mary Anning, a cabinet-maker's daughter, found the first intact skeleton of a prehistoric dolphin-like creature, and spent a year chipping it from the soft cliffs near Lyme Regis. This was only the first of many important discoveries made by this incredible woman, perhaps the most important paleontologist of her day.
Henry de la Beche was the son of a gentry family, owners of a slave-worked estate in Jamaica where he spent his childhood. As an adolescent back in England, he ran away from military college, and soon found himself living with his elegant, cynical mother in Lyme Regis, where he pursued his passion for drawing and painting the landscapes and fossils of the area. One morning on an expedition to see an extraordinary discovery--a giant fossil--he meets a young woman unlike anyone he has ever met . . .
About this Author
JOAN THOMAS's debut novel, Reading By Lightning (2008), won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book (Canada/Caribbean) and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Curiosity, her second novel, was also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Joan has worked as a teacher, group-home worker, editor, and as the Writing and Publishing consultant at the Manitoba Arts Council. She was a books columnist and longtime contributing reviewer for the Globe and Mail, and in 1996 won a National Magazine Award (Silver) for Creative Non-Fiction. Joan's other works include The Opening Sky and Five Wives. Joan lives in Winnipeg. Visit her website at www.joanthomas.ca.
Reviews
"Meticulous and deeply affecting. The traps of poverty and class, calcified notions of women's place in science and society, fall away to reveal the hidden life below: the human mind and heart excavated with delicate and devastating skill." --Marina Endicott, author of Good to a Fault
"Curiosity is a delight. Set with marvels and rueful comedy, it's a warmly intelligent feat of historical sympathy. Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, with her dead-reckoning gaze, moves through these pages like a muddy-booted angel." --Greg Hollingshead, author of Bedlam
"Rich. . . . [Thomas] practically burrows into the characters. Hers is magnificent prose that appeals to all the senses without grandiloquence. Equally important, Thomas handles the doctrinal debate raised by the then-budding field of geology with [great] subtlety and nuance." --The Toronto Star
"Right from its powerful opening, the novel buffets readers with the inescapable momentum of waves against the Dorset cliffs. . . . Curiosity is without question the best novel this reader has come across in the past year. . . . Lush. . . . Thomas draws [her] characters with such depth, power, and heart tha they remain with the reader long after the novel's covers are closed." --Quill & Quire (starred review)
"Thomas handles beautifully the class-afflicted nuances of a doomed love story." --More magazine
"A brilliant, soulful, multi-layered novel. . . . We are drenched in all the sights, sounds and smells of the era [and] become privy to the ecstasy and the agony of the doomed love affair between the two main characters. . . . Lush prose, compelling narrative and vivid characters [make] this one of the best books of the spring publishing season." --Ottawa Citizen
"A precise reconstruction of the social and intellectual world of early 19th-century England. . . .[Thomas's] research gives the characters depth [and] provides Mary with a delightfully distinctive voice. . . . A beautifully wrought . . . work of literary art." --Winnipeg Free Press
"Extraordinary. . . . A timeless story, and an unforgettable one." --Edmonton Journal
"Gripping. . . . Mary Anning as portrayed by Joan Thomas stands in her own right as a memorable figure, vulnerable and indomitable at the same time." --National Post
"[Curiosity] explores the exquisite fragility of a love story that turns upon the lovers' unblinking curiosity before the metaphysical change their work uncovers. . . . A beautiful, erudite, and deeply pleasurable work." --The Walrus
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