You don't need to watch reality TV to see that few families aren't dysfunctional when exposed to close scrutiny. Just as David Chariandy has embellished the darker aspects of his characters for Soucouyant, Paulette Crosse has relished the abnormality of her characters in The Footstep Café.

The heroine of The Footstep Café, Karen Morton, lives near tragedy-plagued Lynn Canyon in North Vancouver where she operates a café (with an accent). Her husband is a podiatrist with a foot fetish and her daughter thinks she might be a lesbian. Her son is prone to bowel movements in closets and her father is an oddball Anglican priest. And the priest is married to a Tibetan.

Advertising for this novel has included an excerpt describing how the heroine likes to masturbate with a carrot: It should be organic and it is important to microwave the vegetable for 26 seconds, thereby taking off the chill and endowing the versatile vegetable with a stimulating heat.

Described as quirky, absurdist, touching and supremely irreverent, this previously announced novel was delayed after David Godfrey's Beach Holme Publishing failed to honour commitments to its contracted authors. As the press was still evading creditors and authors, Beach Holme editor Michael Carroll moved to Ontario to work for Dundurn, enabling the manuscript to resurface under Dundurn's Simon & Pierre imprint. During that two-year waiting period, the retail price went up two bucks.

Paulette Crosse is a pseudonym for Janine Cross of North Vancouver who has published the fantasy novel, Touched by Venom, one of Library Journal's Five Best SF & Fantasy Books of 2005.

978-155002-716-7

[BCBW 2007] "fiction"