The Sleeping Car Porter - September 27, 2022 - Coach House Books
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE GEORGES BUGNET AWARD FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE CITY OF CALGARY W. O. MITCHELL BOOK PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INAUGURAL CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE (US and CANADA)
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.
“Mayr’s prose is vivid but never overwrought, capturing the surrealism of intense fatigue in constant motion … Readers will be captivated.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall - Spring 2017 - Coach House Books
Dr. Edith Vane, scholar of English literature, is contentedly ensconced at the University of Inivea. Her dissertation on African-Canadian pioneer housewife memoirist Beulah Crump-Withers is about to be published, and her job’s finally safe, if she only can fill out her AAO properly. She’s a little anxious, but a new floral blouse and her therapist's repeated assurance that she is the architect of her own life should fix that. All should be well, really. Except for her broken washing machine, her fickle new girlfriend, her missing friend Coral, her backstabbing fellow professors, a cutthroat new dean – and the fact that the sentient and malevolent Crawley Hall has decided it wants them all out, and the hall and its hellish hares will stop at nothing to get rid of them.
‘An enjoyably funny, manic, queer, and hallucinatory farce, the novel also acts as a kind of poison pen letter about the contemporary ivory tower.’
– Toronto Star
Monoceros - Fall 2011 - Coach House Books
Winner of the 2012 Relit Award for Best Novel
Winner of the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award for Best Fiction
A Globe and Mail Best Novel of 2011
A seventeen-year-old boy, bullied and heartbroken, hangs himself. And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.
His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend's girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student's name, that she could care more about her students than her ex's new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counsellor, Walter, feels guilty – maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the very Catholic school. And Walter, who's been secretly in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that's a little callous. He’s also tired of Max's obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster.
And then Max meets a drag queen named Crepe Suzette. And everything changes.
Buy it here: Canada
Buy it here: US
Venous Hum - 2004 - Arsenal Pulp Press
High school reunions can be hell. But when you throw in racial and sexual tensions, extramarital affairs, and cannibalistic, undead vegetarians, it's hell times infinity.
Brash, clever, and monstrously funny, Venous Hum charts the lives of Lai Fun Kugelheim and Stefanja Dumanowski, best friends who, upon hearing the news of an old high school acquaintance's death, are gripped by an insatiable nostalgia and organize a twenty-year reunion. What initially seemed like a simple task becomes increasingly complicated for Lai Fun, but the past is nothing compared to her messy present: her marriage to a successful businesswoman is crumbling, she's having an affair with a man (who happens to be Stefanja's husband), and her oddly supernatural mother--an immigrant vegetarian with an unusual appetite--only wants her daughter to be happy. But in the wake of such chaos, the only constant is the hum of the blood coursing through her veins.
‘...Suzette Mayr's latest novel weaves an outrageously comical yet surreal tale of broken hearts, burning hearts, and hearts for dinner.’
- Quill & Quire
Moon Honey - 1995 -NeWest Press
Nominated for the Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book and the Georges Bugnet award for Best Novel
Carmen and Griffin, young and white, are goofy, head-over-heels in love. When Carmen turns into a black woman, Griffin thrills at a love turned exotic. But Carmen's transformation means trouble for Griffin's racist mother, already struggling with a new lover and a husband nicknamed God. The question is, can love be relied on to save the day? Moon Honey is a funny, sexy tale of love affairs and magical transformations.
The Widows - 1998 -NeWest Press
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean region
Hannelore, Clotilde, and Frau Schnadelhuber are three old women tired of living in a world that doesn’t allow old women to be seen or heard. Deciding to shake their fists at such a world, the three women plot to go over Niagara Falls in a bright orange space-age barrel. With the assistance of Cleopatra Maria, the 26-year-old genius granddaughter of Hannelore and grandniece of Clotilde, the four women steal the barrel from a travelling show and drive it across Canada determined to prove their worth to a world devoted to youth.