 | |
| Author | Andrew Unger |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Published | 2020 (Turnstone Press) |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 272 pp (first edition) |
Once Removed is a novel by Canadian author Andrew Unger published in 2020. [1] Published by Turnstone Press, the book is a satire set in the fictional town of Edenfeld, Manitoba and tells the story of Timothy Heppner, a ghostwriter trying to preserve the history of his small Mennonite town. [2]
At the beginning of the novel, Timothy Heppner is working for the town's Parks and Recreation Department, removing trees and destroying historic buildings to make room for strip malls. He also sidelines as a ghostwriter writing family history and genealogy books for locals, but finds he is losing clients. Eventually, he is tasked with writing a thorough and true history of the town and, along with his wife Katie and the town's Preservation Society, he attempts to preserve the house of a famous local writer Elsie Dyck, who's been cast out of town for writing negatively about it. In the process, he comes into conflict with the town's mayor who is set on gentrification and boosterism.
Timothy Heppner - a struggling ghostwriter tasked with writing a history of Edenfeld. Also works for the town's Parks and Rec department. Married to Katie.
Katie Brandt-Heppner - a university student finishing her master's degree. Married to Timothy.
B.L.T. Wiens - the "progressive" mayor of Edenfeld, intent on gentrification and the destruction of the town's past.
Elsie Dyck - a famous writer from Edenfeld, who has not been seen in town in decades.
Randall Hiebert - Timothy's friend and fellow ghostwriter.
Brenda from Loans - a heavily tattooed member of the Preservation Society. Also works for the local credit union.
Mrs. Friesen - an assertive and knowledgeable member of the local Preservation Society.
Dietrich F. Harder - one of Timothy's ghostwriting clients.
Once Removed won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Awards for Best First Book at the Manitoba Book Awards in 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2020 Margaret McWilliams Award for best popular history book. [3] [4] [5] It was also selected for the Winnipeg Free Press book club in May 2021. [6] Due to its themes of heritage and historic preservation, the novel was listed as a Recommended Read by the National Trust for Canada in 2021. [7]
In reference to the book's humour, Morley Walker, in a review for the Winnipeg Free Press called the book a "good-natured ribbing of Mennonite culture," while saying that "you don’t need to be a Menno to find (Unger) amusing, but it won’t hurt." [8] Walker also suggests the town of Edenfeld is a "fill-in" for Steinbach, Manitoba, and that the fictional Elsie Dyck may have been inspired by the real-life author Miriam Toews, although Unger himself notes the reception of authors Rudy Wiebe, Di Brandt, and Margaret Laurence within their communities as additional inspirations for the character. [9] [10]
Scholar Robert Zacharias has cited Once Removed, along with Casey Plett's work, as representative of a shift in Mennonite literature by depicting characters who have chosen to stay within their communities, rather than leaving them, and has also pointed out metafictional allusions to other Mennonite writers such as Miriam Toews, Di Brandt, and David Bergen within the book. [11] Scholar Nathan Dueck has called the book a künstlerroman in its portrayal of Timothy Heppner's growth as a writer. [12]
Di Brandt often stylized as di brandt, is a Canadian poet and scholar from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She became Winnipeg's first Poet Laureate in 2018.
The Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC) is a Mennonite Brethren denomination in Canada. It is a member of the Mennonite World Conference and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
Steinbach is a city located about 58 km (36 mi) south-east of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Steinbach is the third-largest city in Manitoba, with a population of 17,806, and the largest community in the Eastman region. The city is bordered by the Rural Municipality of Hanover to the north, west, and south, and the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie to the east. Steinbach was first settled by Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine in 1874, whose descendants continue to have a significant presence in the city today. Steinbach is found on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, while Sandilands Provincial Forest is a short distance east of the city.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) is a private Mennonite university located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It is affiliated with Mennonite Church Canada and the Mennonite Brethren Church of Manitoba. It has an enrolment of 1,607 students. The university was chartered in 1999 with a Shaftesbury campus in southwest Winnipeg, as well as Menno Simons College and a campus at the University of Winnipeg.
A Complicated Kindness (2004) is the third novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel won the Governor General's Award for English Fiction, the CBA Libris Fiction Award, and CBC's Canada Reads.
Mennonite Heritage Village is a museum in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada telling the story of the Low German Mennonites in Canada. The museum contains both an open-air museum open seasonally, and indoor galleries open year-round. Opened in 1967 and expanded significantly since then, the Mennonite Heritage Village is a major tourist attraction in the area and officially designated as a Manitoba Signature Museum and Star Attraction. Approximately 47,000 visitors visit the museum each year.
Manitoban culture is a term that encompasses the artistic elements that are representative of Manitoba. Manitoba's culture has been influenced by both traditional and modern Canadian artistic values, as well as some aspects of the cultures of immigrant populations and its American neighbours. In Manitoba, the Minister of Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Sport is the cabinet minister responsible for promoting and, to some extent, financing Manitoba culture. The Manitoba Arts Council is the agency that has been established to provide the processes for arts funding. The Canadian federal government also plays a role by instituting programs and laws regarding culture nationwide. Most of Manitoba's cultural activities take place in its capital and largest city, Winnipeg.
Lynnette D'anna is a Canadian writer, and the author of five novels. Canadian literature
Turnstone Press is a Canadian literary publisher founded in 1976 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the oldest in Manitoba and among the most respected independent publishers in Canada.
Royden Loewen is a retired Canadian History Professor and Chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg. As a prominent historian in the field of Mennonite history, his book about the Mennonite Communities 1850-1930 is a leading publication about the emigration waves from south Russia to Canada.
Irma Voth (2011) is the fifth novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel, about a Mennonite teenager whose life is transformed when a bohemian film crew comes to her settlement to make a film about Mennonites, was informed by Toews' experience as lead actress in Silent Light, the award-winning 2007 film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas.
The Daily Bonnet is a satirical Mennonite website, known as The Unger Review as of 2023. It was created by Andrew Unger and launched in May 2016. It features news stories and editorials, with the structure of conventional newspapers, but whose content is contorted to make humorous commentary on Mennonite and Anabaptist issues.
Abraham Dueck Penner (1910–2008) was a Canadian businessman and politician from Steinbach, Manitoba, who was instrumental in transforming and modernizing the lifestyle of the conservative Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites of the region.
Andrew Unger is a Canadian novelist and satirist. He is the author of the satirical news website The Unger Review, as well as the novel Once Removed and the collection The Best of the Bonnet.
Mennonite literature emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century as both a literary movement and a distinct genre. Mennonite literature refers to literary works created by or about Mennonites.
Women Talking (2018) is the seventh novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. Toews describes her novel as "an imagined response to real events," the gas-facilitated rapes that took place on the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia: Between 2005 and 2009, over a hundred girls and women in the colony woke up to discover that they had been raped in their sleep. These nighttime attacks were denied or dismissed by colony elders until finally it was revealed that a group of men from the colony were spraying an animal anaesthetic into their victims' houses to render them unconscious. Toews' novel centers on the secret meetings of eight Mennonite women who, on behalf of the other women in the colony, must decide how to react to these traumatic events. They have only 48 hours before the colony men, who are away to post bail for the rapists, return.
MaryLou Driedger is a Canadian journalist and Young Adult fiction novelist from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
East Village is a fictional town in the Canadian province of Manitoba, frequently used as a setting in novels by Miriam Toews. The town was based on Toews's real-life hometown of Steinbach. East Village appears in A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows as well as the film adaptation of All My Puny Sorrows. Toews also refers to Steinbach in Fight Night and her nonfiction work Swing Low.