Stoddart Publishing
April, 2002
6x9  224 pages
ISBN 077373337X
Hardcover
$29.95 CDN

Jacket copy:
In Closer Apart, Canadian fiction writer Gayla Reid enters the lives of three generations of women in the McGinty family in Australia, the land of her childhood. In linked stories spanning the country's first century as a federation, from 1901 to 2001, Reid takes us from the repressed middle-class neighbourhoods of Victorian Sydney to the treacherous, muddy tracks travelled by Australian soldiers fleeing the Japanese at Rabaul to the sleepy slopes of Ardara, a sheep farm in the northern tablelands of New South Wales.

Throughout the collection, the century's wars drum ceaselessly in the background as Reid's characters struggle to make the best of the lives and times they've been given. Whether it's Ellen McGinty forfeiting the comforts of city life to work a rough piece of land alongside her husband, a near stranger, or her daughter Alice finding joy – and losing it – in the flax fields of the state of Victoria, the women and men figured here are well acquainted with sacrifice but finely tuned to the power of sexual love and their fragile connection to the earth.

Reid's stories are themselves close and apart; they exist as complete worlds in themselves that nevertheless relate to each other in a captivating fictional universe. Closer Apart is another stunning work from an enormously talented writer.

Stoddart Publishing
April, 2001
5.5x8.25  312 pages
ISBN 0773732802
Hardcover
$29.95 CDN

Jacket copy:
All the Seas of the World is the sweeping yet finely calibrated story of two women, Deirdre and Bernadette, whose intense connection is forged during their childhood in rural Australia, and strengthened as their lives wind through decades, across seas and continents, and between lovers and ideologies. Two men in particular colour their lives: Martín, a journalist from Argentina who becomes Deirdre's obsession; and Sandy, Martín's best friend and the man who repeatedly plucks Deirdre from the depths of loss.

With Saigon at Tet and the Dirty War in Argentina as flashpoints in their shifting relationships, these characters struggle with fundamental questions: For those who are committed to social change, what risks are worth taking? How far do you go? When do you bail out?

For Deirdre and Martín, the answers are fraught with danger. And Sandy and Bernadette can do little to protect them.

Like the characters that grace its pages, All the Seas of the World is at once deeply serious and bright with optimism. It is an elegant debut novel from one of Canada's most intelligent new literary voices.

Published in Canada:
Douglas & McIntyre
September 1994
198X130 224 pages
ISBN: 1550541765
$16.95 CAD
Published in Australia:
Allen & Unwin
October 1996
198X130 224 pages
ISBN: 1864481994
$18.95 AU (incl GST)

Jacket copy:
In this debut collection, Gayla Reid draws on the doubleness and dislocation that expatriates carry in their hearts. The people in these stories grow up Catholic in 1950s Australia, a world of immense natural beauty, and come to adulthood in the turbulent decade of the Vietnam War. Moving fluidly between past and present, between Australia, Southeast Asia and Canada, Reid follows her characters as they go to war or fight against it, work to create a society they can believe in, and explore the possibilities of friendship and love. For many of them, middle age brings with it a recognition of the power of memory and the claims of the past. The lives depicted here are full of contradictions, shot through with hope, disappointment and betrayals large and small. In spare, lucid prose, Gayla Reid portrays them all with intense feeling and a remarkably strong sense of place and time.

Gayla Reid's stories have won the 1994 CBC Radio/Saturday Night Literary Competition, the 1993 Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award. This collection provides an opportunity to see why her work has attracted Canada's most significant awards for short fiction.