New book a true story set in the County

Annie McLurg

The County’s Annie McLurg launched her debut novel Friday in the company of about 80 friends and fans.

‘No Angel’ (Pedlar Press) takes place deep in Prince Edward County and follows a five-year story of a city woman who buys a beautiful wreck of a house, takes it apart board by board, then hires tradesmen to help her put it together again. By then she is broke.  The acre and a half is a mess: fallen trees, broken trees, poison ivy, piles of debris. She has no idea how to deal with the trees. A man comes to help in exchange for the wood.

“This is a true story about that man and myself, turned into fiction,” says McLurg. “I was inspired to write by the character of the man. The relationship that developed was affectionate and filled with tension. The man was dearly loved in the community. He was generous, kind and protective. I took care to write about him gently and with love.”

“Annie McLurg is known to us variously as friend, neighbour, student of fine art, house restorer, drummer, grandmother, Roman blind maker, snappy dresser, personal caregiver to an ailing friend….and now as published author” said event host Jill Hill, in her introduction.  “The latter role required, in addition to her writing and self-editing skills, incredible patience and persistence. The gestation period of this book has been a matter of years. I confess there were times when I wondered whether it would ever see the light of day – I can’t imagine what Annie herself must have endured.

“I am a visual artist,” says McLurg. “So how the story looks on the page is important. My process in visual art is reductive, and I used the same process in editing No Angel. During that process I challenged myself to see how much of the story I could take away and still retain meaning and flow. I was also questioning the need for punctuation. The story needed space around it so I used space instead of punctuation. I used the shape of the words on the page to suggest things I left unsaid. I pushed the idea of placement as far as I could without losing the threads of the story.”

No Angel is available at Books & Company.