About the
Author
Don Coles is one of Canada's most successful and respected poets. He studied history at the University of Toronto and took a second degree at Cambridge University, then spent more than a decade on the continent in France, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. Coles and his wife, Heidi, returned to Canada after the birth of his first child, and he was invited to join the faculty of York University's humanities department.
"It turned out, after a worrisome few days, that I liked it very much, and I was there for more than thirty years," he told the Globe and Mail in an interview. He was also, for ten years, Senior Poetry Editor at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Coles recently turned to fiction, in part out of a desire to work "in a more generous and pliant space than my usual genre," he told the National Post. He described the process of writing Doctor Bloom's Story as: "A sheer joy. …And I lived in it for eight or nine hours a day for at least four of the seven days in every week for three years. Not bad for a person generally considered to be, as I'm belatedly realizing, past it."
Don Coles has published ten books of poetry. He is the recipient of a Governor General's Award, a Trillium Award and the John Glassco Prize for Translation. He lives in Toronto.
Dr. Bloom's Story was published in the New Face of Fiction program in 2004.
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Books by this Author
Doctor Bloom's Story(Vintage Canada, 2004)
Doctor Bloom's Story (Knopf Canada, 2004)
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Literary Awards
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Reviews
Praise for Doctor Bloom's Story:
"Part crisp thriller, part meditation on writing, Doctor Bloom's Story is wholly marvellous."
-Maclean's
"A straight-ahead, spryly imagined, tightly written tale of suspense. …This is fabulous stuff. Doctor Bloom's Story has countless… moments that, in their combination of gaiety and sadness, fix themselves in your imagination… Doctor Bloom is surely one of the most memorable and triumphantly conceived characters in recent Canadian fiction."
-The Globe and Mail
"Coles writes so elegantly and so convincingly that we would follow him anywhere."
-The Literary Review of Canada
"Coles, who has won many awards for collections of poetry, tells Dr. Bloom's story with an ear attuned to the rhythms of speech and an admirable eye for detail."
-Quill & Quire
"Doctor Bloom's Story is, by turns, witty, contemplative, and spirited story telling. One of our finest poets now proves himself to be an accomplished novelist."
-Guy Vanderhaeghe
"Any fan of Coles' poetry will instantly recognize the distinctive, casually sophisticated voice of this novel, the almost off-hand way it gathers a whole range of interests into a compelling whole. Doctor Bloom's Story is at once a medical mystery tale, an exploration of the limits of love and friendship, and a tribute to the art of writing - all rolled into an effortlessly seductive narrative. I couldn't put it down."
-John Bemrose, author of The Island Walkers
"Doctor Bloom's Story is utterly compelling, a novel both wise and wonderful."
-Richard B. Wright, author of Clara Callan
"How wonderful to find this trusted voice again, the poet transformed into the worldly late-bloomer Bloom! Reading Don Coles is like listening to an erudite, judicious friend tell the story of a life of the mind that doesn't for a moment neglect the delights of the flesh."
-Katherine Govier
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Links to extra resources
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