bernicefriesen@bernicefriesen.com
BERNICE FRIESEN
Writer Editor Visual Artist
"It's said of some novels that they beg to be filmed. The pictures Friesen makes are a cinematographer's dream..." Jim Bartley, Toronto Globe and Mail
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Universal Disorder, my new novel, is just out with Freehand Books, and I have not yet held a copy in my eager hands. You can read the prologue and first chapter below.
Universal Disorder
Prologue
ℚ
324-7749.
What a thing to appear on his call display: a ghost calling.
"Nine," he says, as if he's able to stand behind her in the street and whisper her names: Seraphina--little angel--Jae. As if he could reach out and smooth his thumb up through her hair, the soft crewcut revealing the blue fleur-de-lys tattooed on the back of her scalp.
Imagine the system that gave it to her without knowing how exquisite it was; the first three digits add up to 9; the last four to 27, and two plus seven is 9, so the whole number is divisible by 9.
Nine is so beautiful, so neatly three 3s, the first truly odd number, the first oddity other than one... I... me, myself, that self-obsessed simpleton.
But it can't be. She must have given up that number shortly after he measured the space-time between his skin and hers, and found the distance unbearable.
Ten years ago calling. Really?
How old is he?
He walks to the bathroom, and lifts his heavy gaze to the mirror as if he's moving through water. Only the eyes are familiar, a blue of too much depth, staring through a nebulous tangle of hair. The stranger in the mirror lifts his hands; it's terrifying to feel those hands on his face.
He is the ghost--the shattered one--these eyes, these hands, these feet that managed to stumble out of the psyche ward.
Ten years ago, when he lost her, he lost himself.
∞
Books, etc...
The Latest From
Revisionary: An Exhibition Blog
Revisionary is an archive of visual art combined with non-fiction, a creative autobiography that I work at, sometimes revisiting past creations and parts of my life with new writing. These combinations are difficult to publish anywhere but cyber-space.
My visual art includes the usual media, but also cement and stone mosaics, digital images, carved pottery, and wearable art from repurposed leather, fur, electronics, and found objects. I still love to work with my hands.
This is where I rant, rage, and do silly things, talk about crazy ex-boyfriends, but also about having cancer and babies at the same time. I've written very little creative nonfiction that isn't in Revisionary.
The colour, the texture, even the shape–as if it had plopped out of the can to be sliced–I knew I’d seen it somewhere before.
And then it came to me.
That head is Spam all the way through.
Universal Disorder, my new novel out this Fall 2020 with Freehand Books will be launching very soon, but in the mean time, enjoy some older
Readings and Interviews
