On your bicycle, we are
flying. In my sock feet and nightgown,
I stand up on your
handlebars, the prow of a ship heading into
the great unknown, and I
climb onto your mile-wide shoulders,
can see the next
continent ... You catch the moon, always heavy
in your mouth. You tell
me it tastes like ice and regret. You tell
me it tastes like
liftoff.
Eugenia Ledoux, nine
years old, wakes to a note from
her father:
‘gone to save the world. sorry. yours, sheb
wooly ledoux.
asshole.’ Eugenia is left behind with her
mother, the
sharp-edged B-movie actress Mink, and
her sister, the
death-obsessed and hauntingly beautiful
Immaculata. When Mink
climbs into the family car
and vanishes, Eugenia
doubles in age overnight, but
remains the dark and
diminutive creature who earned
the nickname
‘Stunt.’
Eugenia devotes
herself to finding Sheb. She writes
to the man she
believes to be Sheb’s father: I.I. Finbar
Me The Three, a
retired tightrope walker. Waiting for
Finbar’s
response, she retreats to Toronto Island,
where she meets
Samuel Station, a barefoot volup-
tuary, world
traveller and ring-maker.
When Finbar does
write back, Eugenia wonders if
she will find what
she is looking for – or something else
entirely. Studded
with postcards from outer space,
twins, levitation,
the explosion of a shoulder-pad
factory, and some
accomplished taxidermy, Stunt is
part dirge, part
cowboy poetry and part love letter to
the wilder corners of
Toronto and of ourselves.
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