14 Annabel Lyon
Annabel Lyon’s astounding novel The Golden Mean (Random House
Canada) has been nominated for every major Canadian literary award. It
made the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist, was a finalist for the
Governor General’s Literary Award, and won the Rogers Writers’ Trust
Award. Although the historical events that provide the context for the
story are factual, the crux of the novel is the wholly imagined
relationship between Aristotle and a teenaged, pre-greatness Alexander. It
is an unlikely and weighty sounding premise, but this singular flight of
intellectual fancy is so cleverly realized (thanks largely to Lyon’s
fat-free writing and use of present day colloquial English in the
dialogue) that the 2300-year-old time frame is rendered irrelevant to the
book’s readability. It took Lyon eight years, including seven years of
intense research into the period and a rereading of the philosophical
works of Aristotle, to complete the manuscript.
Annabel Lyon’s earlier work includes two acclaimed story collections,
Oxygen and The Best Thing For You.
Photo: Phillip Chin
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