Happy book birthday to Harold Johnson‘s CLIFFORD, publishing today with House of Anansi Press!
CLIFFORD has been lauded as a “genre-dying” work, bridging the imagined and the true in one breathtaking story that starts with the author going home for his brother Clifford’s funeral and a chair that stands on three legs.
From the publisher: “Exquisitely crafted, funny, visionary, and wholly moving, Clifford is an extraordinary work for the way it 
defies strict category and embraces myriad forms of storytelling. To read it is to be immersed in a home, a family, a community, the wider world, the entire cosmos.”
Join Harold on October 2nd for a reading of CLIFFORD at McNally Robinson Winnipeg. More information about the event available here: Mcnallyrobinson.com//An-Evening-with-Harold-R-Johnson
Advance Praise and Accolades for CLIFFORD:
On the CBC Books list of “10 Canadian books coming out in August we can’t wait to read”
Open Book interview: “Harold R. Johnson’s newest book combines his expertise in fiction and non-fiction, in a genre-blending work that is being hailed as the crown jewel of an already acclaimed oeuvre.”
“Memoir, fantasy, fiction? Genre bends in Clifford. Clifford, refuses to distinguish fact from fantasy or fiction from biography…the story’s meditations on loss, family, and fateful actions prove absorbing from the opening page.”
—Toronto Star, Thestar.com/memoir-fantasy-fiction-genre-bends-in-clifford
“Clifford is a luminous, genre-bending memoir. Heartache and hardship are no match for the disarming whimsy, the layered storytelling shot through with love. The power of land, the pull of family, the turbulence of poverty are threads woven together with explorations of reality, tackling truth with a trickster slant.”
—Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster
“Harold R. Johnson is a wonderful writer, and Clifford is his best
work yet. For fans of Jack Finney and Richard Matheson, this terrific book is a wonderfully human tale of memory both bitter and sweet, as well as a poignant exploration of time’s hold over all of us.”
—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award–winning author of Quantum Night
“Clifford is a story only Harold Johnson could tell. By turns soft and harsh, intellectual and emotional, Johnson weaves truth, fiction, science, and science fiction into a tapestry that is rich with meaning and maybes. A natural storyteller, Johnson seeks imagined pasts and futurity with equal parts longing and care. This work allows readers and writers the possibility of new and ancient modes of storytelling.”
—Tracey Lindberg, author of Birdie
“Clifford is unlike anything I’ve read—it is at once a story of science and magic, love and loss, and a case for the infi nite potential of humanity. It is a book of profound wisdom—an unpacking of the deepest truths of science in an effort to transform the pain of grief and regret into healing and forgiveness.”
—Patti Laboucane-Benson, author of The Outside Circle