{"product_id":"going-down-swinging-isbn-9780679310730","title":"Going Down Swinging","description":"\u003cb\u003eA remarkable debut novel and bittersweet tale of the unflinching love and devotion  between a mother and daughter. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRazor sharp and darkly funny, \u003ci\u003eGoing Down Swinging\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles  two years in the life of the Hoffmans. Eilleen Hoffman has just told Danny, her con-artist  lover and father of her youngest daughter Grace, to get out—for good. Once a teacher,  Eilleen lived a middle-class life, but her taste in men coupled with a predilection  for pills and booze has brought her down. Desperate to prevent her family from sinking  deeper into poverty, Eilleen reluctantly goes on welfare.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Eventually she turns to  the only friends she has left, hustlers and hookers, to learn how a woman makes fast  money, no investment necessary. With Eilleen on welfare and her older daughter Charlotte  a teenaged runaway, child welfare authorities descend on the Hoffmans. As Eilleen  trails through several attempts at drying out, the well-intentioned Children's Protection  Society finally intervenes to apprehend Grace. With the threat of prolonged separation  now a stark reality, Eilleen and Grace must rally to confront their demons with grit,  determination and humour. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnblinkingly observed and brilliantly written, \u003ci\u003eGoing Down  Swinging\u003c\/i\u003e is about the powerful bond between mother and child. And with her skilful  narrative interplay, Billie Livingston illustrates poignantly how the truth of our  stories lies not so much in the black and white, as it does in the grey.\"\u003ci\u003eGoing Down Swinging\u003c\/i\u003e is one smart bomb of a tale, detonating and reconstructing one  family's hell-on-wheels attempt to choose love over self-destruction. Livingston  yokes her stinging, stylish wit to a luminous empathy for human frailty in this shout-out  story of mothers and daughters.\" —Elise Levine, author of \u003ci\u003eDriving Men Mad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Livingston  pulls off the difficult literary task of serving up poignancy without sentimentality  in Eilleen and Grace, two characters so vivid they keep splashing in the brain long  after the last page is turned.\" — Anne Fleming, author of the Governor General's  Award nominee \u003ci\u003ePool-Hopping and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eGoing Down Swinging\u003c\/i\u003e is a moving first  book, and Livingston a compelling new voice—one that should be welcomed and watched.\"  —\u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"[This] first-time novelist reveals an unflinching eye and  a formidable grasp of the mysteries of the human heart.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Vancouver Sun\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Livingston  succeeds gorgeously in capturing the messiness and unresolvable ambiguities of familial  love. Her lovingly drawn, half-crazy characters always transcend a caseworker's clichés.\"  —\u003ci\u003eNational Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Intelligent and touching—Livingston resists easy sentimentality  at every turn.\" —\u003ci\u003eToronto Star\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\"Livingston's characters are scrappers.  They're  canny and sharp and share a dark streak of humour that comes from the love of family  and the communal understanding of knowing who is the enemy.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe New Brunswick  Reader\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Eilleen and Grace—from whose points of view the story is alternately told—are small fictional masterpieces.\" —\u003ci\u003eVancouver Courier\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"An absorbing tale of growing  up disadvantaged with an alcoholic mother and an absent father, the novel is no coming-of-age  weeper.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Toronto Star\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Livingston’s book is a humane, political look at the  world of hard knocks . . . we discover there are no happy endings, just the possibility  of fresh beginnings.” —\u003ci\u003eNew Brunswick Telegraph-Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Billie Livingston  vividly captures the heady romance of mother-daughter love, so strengthening in its  unconditional acceptance and support, and so wretchedly debilitating in its blindness.”  —\u003ci\u003eHamilton Spectator\u003c\/i\u003eBILLIE LIVINGSTON is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels \u003ci\u003eGoing Down Swinging\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCease to Blush\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eOne Good Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize, nominated for the Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book Award, and named a best book of the year by \u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail. \u003c\/i\u003eShe is also the author of \u003ci\u003eGreedy Little Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e, a short story collection that won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the CBC's Bookie Award; \u003ci\u003eThe Crooked Heart of Mercy\u003c\/i\u003e, a novel; and \u003ci\u003eThe Chick at the Back of the Church\u003c\/i\u003e, a poetry collection for which Livinston won the Pat Lowther award. Her short story, \"Sitting on the Edge of Marlene,\" has been adapted as a feature film. In 2017, Livingston received the Writers' Trust Engel\/Findley Award \"in recognition of a remarkable body of work, and in anticipation of future contributions to Canadian literature.\"Eilleen \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNOVEMBER 1972\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one ever believes they'll sink So Low. \u003ci\u003eSo Low\u003c\/i\u003e is someone else's life, someone else's man, someone else's job. Everyone imagines little rubber bands hooked at the shoulder, springing back to safety just before the life-sucking bedrock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow Danny's gone, your man, the guy you called husband. And you're wandering in the haze between dazed and terrified. Flat broke. Flat out. Just flat; a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of your former self. Somewhere along the line, you got weak and sickly, sucked dry. And he got necessary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe's always had a kind of crafty power-everyone wanted him and no one could push him. Not until they took him away, at least. Why did you start up with him again? If he hadn't've been busted two years ago, you would've dumped him. So then, what'd you go and do in the meantime, you idiot-went out with one too many assholes until even Danny sounded good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd Charlie's gone and fucked off too-mind you, for all intents and purposes, she's been gone two years now. Couldn't wait to get out of the house-all that hash and acid floating around the streets, all those micro-minis and fishnet stockings. Fourteen years old when Danny ended up in jail, and without him to make her, she wouldn't do a goddamn thing you said. She got pissed off, sometimes smug, always bitching, sitting around lazy or walking off and coming home late. It wasn't supposed to be that way. She's been cruel ever since. She won't look after you and you can't look after her and she won't let you. She's sick of you and your wine and pills, and screaming retaliation every time she mouths back. Thank god for Grace. She loves you. She clambers all over you and says so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow it's just the two of you again, you'll celebrate her seventh this month, alone. And you'll have to work, find work for bills, and landlords and food and rent and Grace and the hydro and the phone. You've been sober all of one week now-too sick to get a job again, to go back to teaching-that was someone else, that woman. Sick when you do drink, sick when you don't. Nauseous and sensitive-skin hurts, and your hair, you can feel each hair move when the air shifts. And the mess, everything's dirty-you can't get up the strength or the will to clean. You'll have to get welfare again. At least for now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou pace all morning, trying to get up the nerve, the strength to go down to the Welfare office. Pick out the right clothes, now, or they won't believe you. They'd have to be morons. He never kept you like a queen-you refused all hot merchandise in the form of furs and jewels-stupid-stupid-stupid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy noon, a social worker is looking over your application. He's sweet somehow, so careful with you. His little round bald head, his soft voice. Seems foreign now, another language; gentle, articulate. He puts gs on the ends of his verbs. None of Danny's crowd could ever string together five words of proper English. It's always \u003ci\u003eboozin'\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003escrewin'\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003efuckin'\u003c\/i\u003e-or more likely \u003ci\u003ef(ee-iz)uckin'\u003c\/i\u003e-they've got to throw that \u003ci\u003eee-iz\u003c\/i\u003e smack in the middle of anything illegal or obscene, just in case the walls have ears. But you can't imagine this man ever uses those words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe gives you the emergency assistance cheque. You'll soon receive a cheque every month: $269.67. For you and one dependant. You start to cry. The social worker doesn't understand. Or maybe he does. He just doesn't know what to do but yank tissue after tissue. Each one gives a sympathetic little gasp as it pulls free, until both you and the Kleenex box are hoarse from hyperventilation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGuilt is coursing through your arms, up your neck and pounding at the back of your eyeballs until you want to scream, rip it out of your wrists like ropy veins. It's pointless, guilt is useless. It just wasn't meant to be, that's all. You and Danny shouldn't have bothered again and Charlie should've just kept doing whatever she was doing: screwing with her foster mother's head or robbing every kid in the group home blind. Christ, stop thinking such shit-it's not her fault, it's not your fault, it just is. You just couldn't get along-used to start up as soon as you came in the door, the screaming. Fights were getting worse and worse and you were scared it was going to get as bad as it got before she took off the first time. Scared of getting your hair pulled and your mouth slapped and scared of doing it all back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe night before Charlie left for good, you didn't come home. But it was about time that kid took some responsibility. Maybe it was time \u003ci\u003eshe\u003c\/i\u003e found out what it was like looking after a seven-year-old in this insane asylum with a man who wouldn't come home for three days running half the time. It was your turn to bugger off and take a break. It's not like you were drinking much. And you were trying to go to AA now and then.","brand":"Vintage Canada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299953037541,"sku":"NP9780679310730","price":19.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679310730.jpg?v=1767728280","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/going-down-swinging-isbn-9780679310730","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}