U.K.-born, Vancouver-based, self-publisher Ryan Frawley describes his first novel, Scar (529 Publishing $14.99) as "the gutsy, big-idea kind of novel Russians used to write." It's the first-person narrative of schizophrenic Dermot Fallon, an English-born descendent of Irish ancestors, who has immigrated to Vancouver as a young adult and finds himself living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Scar records Dermot's psychiatric sessions and recalls his recent trip to Ireland to bury his father. Frawley is a Thought Catalog contributor who wrote Thought Catalog: Do You Have to Be Miserable to be an Artist? 9780986901300

[BCBW 2012]