<p>”To give a feeling of Christopher Gudgeon’s new collection, let’s turn to the story that gives the book its name. In The Widow Soré, the title character finds among her deceased fiancé Guillermo’s papers what appears to be a stack of letters. Titled <i>The Encyclopedia of Lies</i>, the letters recount the romantic, outsized exploits of another Guillermo, or one whom Isabel takes to be another Guillermo, because this must be a work of fiction, unless. Isabel travels to visit another woman who might hold the answer. ‘Any evidence regarding the true nature of Guillermo – whether he was one man or two, many or all – was not as important as the words each woman used to define their memories of him,’ Gudgeon writes. The implication runs through Gudgeon’s motley crew: roughly half of these 16 stories contain a recurring cast glanced from multiple angles. We contain multitudes, but our many-or-allness is less important than the stories that define us, even if those stories turn out to be an encyclopedia of lies.”(<i>The Globe and Mail</i>)</p> <p>In these sixteen stories, Christopher Gudgeon, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed <i>Song of Kosovo</i>,takes a heartbreaking and hilarious look into the lives, loves, sexual obsessions and delusions that inform a grand cast of off-kilter characters.</p>
<p>”To give a feeling of Christopher Gudgeon’s new collection, let’s turn to the story that gives the book its name. In The Widow Soré, the title character finds among her deceased fiancé Guillermo’s papers what appears to be a stack of letters. Titled <i>The Encyclopedia of Lies</i>, the letters recount the romantic, outsized exploits of another Guillermo, or one whom Isabel takes to be another Guillermo, because this must be a work of fiction, unless. Isabel travels to visit another woman who might hold the answer. ‘Any evidence regarding the true nature of Guillermo – whether he was one man or two, many or all – was not as important as the words each woman used to define their memories of him,’ Gudgeon writes. The implication runs through Gudgeon’s motley crew: roughly half of these 16 stories contain a recurring cast glanced from multiple angles. We contain multitudes, but our many-or-allness is less important than the stories that define us, even if those stories turn out to be an encyclopedia of lies.”(<i>The Globe and Mail</i>)</p> <p>In these sixteen stories, Christopher Gudgeon, bestselling author of the critically acclaimed <i>Song of Kosovo</i>,takes a heartbreaking and hilarious look into the lives, loves, sexual obsessions and delusions that inform a grand cast of off-kilter characters.</p>