The Nettle Spinner (eBOOK)

"Brilliantly, this writer illustrates the need for an examined life. Analysis. Accountability. A responsibility that we have to the world around us, to each other, the earth beneath our feet ... She manages, and often, to knock me off my feet in one sentence flat ... Unconventional, dense, provocative prose." — Globe and Mail

"Sections of The Nettle Spinner are visceral and nasty and positively hum ... Immensely satisfying, both as an elaboration of the themes Kuitenbrouwer took up in Way Up, her earlier collection of short stories, and as a contribution to the tradition of sexy Canadian fiction written by women." — Winnipeg Free Press

"In The Nettle Spinner, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer intertwines an old-world tale of peasant love and a count's power with the modern story of a wayward treeplanting crew. Where the former is traditional folk tale, the latter is feral, fecund, and sexually fierce. Kuitenbrouwer is a brawny, gifted writer. The Nettle Spinner is one of those forceful, elemental novels where bliss and ache compound into an unexpected sublime." — Jonathan Bennett

"Kuitenbrouwer uses a bold, unapologetic Canadian consciousness to explore existential concerns." — Donna Bailey Nurse

Critics described the stories in Way Up, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's first book of fiction, as "some of the most impressive examples of new Canadian fiction in recent memory." Published in 2003, Way Up received a Danuta Gleed Award and was a finalist for the Relit Award. The Nettle Spinner, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was also named a best of 2005 by January magazine. Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the former fiction editor of the Literary Review of Canada and has also worked as a tree-planter, a lumberjack, and a baker. Her reviews have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Toronto Star, and the National Post. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and is the magazine editor for Bookninja.com.