NEW NOVEL TEASES OUT B.C.'S MAGIC REALITY
On September 13th the artist-run Tin Press will launch Justine Brown's playful, unsettling novel Spin the Bottle, beautifully illustrated by Fantagraphics comics legend Dame Darcy. Brown, author of non-fiction books All Possible Worlds (1995) and Hollywood Utopia (2002), has long been fascinated by utopianism. "My parents were hippies,"; she says. "I have first hand experience of commune life."; She considers herself part of a "post-utopian"; generation.

With Spin the Bottle, Brown turns her attention to the Back-to-the-Land movement which flourished in the 1970s British Columbia, and another part of countercultural life she knows well from personal experience. "The novel shows a lot of it from a child's perspective-the whole dream of living like pioneers in a hand-built cabin in the forest, without electricity, running water, or any other modern convenience. "It's kind of a dark comedy,"; she remarks, "but there's a lot of affection there too.";

The novel has historical and supernatural sides as well, dimensions that come out strongly in the gothic ink illustrations contributed by the inimitable California-based Dame Darcy.

Mermaids, fairies and phantoms abound, and a whole sub-plot involves the theory that the explorer/ pirate Sir Francis Drake came as far as the unmapped British Columbia coast in the sixteenth century, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage which would take him and his crew back to England.

"Dame Darcy's enchanted artwork emphasizes my sense of B.C. as a magical geography,"; says Brown, "a place where anything is possible.";