First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
Read First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women Online
Authors: Eric McCormack
Praise for
First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction
“A lavish and beautifully human novel, [
First Blast of the Trumpet
] creeps into the blood … An utterly absorbing read.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Some books you wish would never end. So it is with Eric McCormack’s latest … [a] dark, rollicking, fabulous story.”
—
Toronto Star
“Hair-raising, thrilling, blood-curdling and wholly satisfying … This novel has the hypnotic fascination of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch … in which every imaginable perversity is rendered with lavish and scrupulous detail …
First Blast
raises the ante of gothic terror. A superb, finely spun yarn, it appeals to the darkest, most secret recesses of the imagination.”
—
The Financial Post
“Wonderful … fantastic story-telling … This novel is so much more than a thinking person’s thriller. It is a novel of imagination and the search for meaning in the face of tragedy. McCormack has written a terrific, engrossing story.”
—
Winnipeg Free Press
“Reading McCormack is like wandering through a mansion with each room crammed to bursting with strange and terrible objects suggesting mysterious lands and arcane philosophies … This novel is a pleasure to read and to read again. The story and the stories within reveal additional subtleties with each new visit.”
—
Edmonton Journal
“
First Blast
is a fun-house ride of a novel; an amusement park of childish nightmares and fears … an imaginative novel, straddling the twilight world where dream and reality merge and linger … A novel of bizarre fantasy and imaginative, gothic terrors made casual,
First Blast
is a grown-up fantasy novel that will amuse any lover of the unusual, the supernatural and the paranoid.”
—
Telegraph-Journal
(Saint John)
“McCormack is an expert in the art of quiet treachery, in creating the fine unassuming line which sheathes the knife, in the shadowy craft of luring us into the torture chamber we secretly can’t resist, beckoning us to act on the desire to revel in the truly sadistic … A damn good read.”
—
The Vancouver Sun
“
First Blast
is an ingenious celebration of human solemnity … a book artfully written for the thinking person, and that means each and every one of us.”
—
The Globe and Mail
“There’s a fairy-tale quality to
First Blast
, a Brothers Grimm for grown-ups who like an intelligent read with a bit of snap, crackle, pop.”
—
Georgia Strait
“[McCormack] is one of a kind … a unique literary voice …
First Blast
celebrates the priority of imagination. It’s completely accessible and non-stop entertaining.”
—
Calgary Herald
“Engrossing … [McCormack] is a crackling good story-teller with an uncanny ability to expose the macabre underbelly of human nature.”
—
The Record
(Kitchener-Waterloo)
“McCormack’s beautifully written account of one man’s search for redemption and some sort of answer to it all is a great read.”
—EYE Weekly
“McCormack’s postmodern metaphysical puzzle is also a marvelous yarn. It spins out in picaresque segments, each distinct, vivid, funny, and full of sighs and wonders.”
—
Quill & Quire
“McCormack’s prose, on a purely sentence level, is always unerring, often stunning …
First Blast
is a novel that expertly sets its sights on an impressive assortment of truths.”
—
Books in Canada
“An impressive book, one that treats the reader as an intelligent, thinking creature, without being obtuse …
First Blast
is a solid novel by a confident writer, moving smoothly and strangely through a man’s life and mind and his various disasters.”
—The Ottawa X Press
“The power of invention is a rare thing and McCormack has tonnes of it.”
—
See Magazine
“McCormack writes beautifully.”
—
The Leader-Post
(Regina)
“An engrossing, redolent, very good book … With Eric McCormack you always sense he’s tapped into something authentically dreadful; you can feel the oozing, putrid mud at the bottom of his metaphors.”
—
Saturday Night
“One of Canada’s foremost new gothic pioneers.”
—
ID
PENGUIN
FIRST BLAST OF THE TRUMPET AGAINST THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN
ERIC McCORMACK
was born in a small village in Scotland. He moved to Canada in 1966 and attended the University of Manitoba. He taught English for over thirty years at St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, specializing in seventeenth-century and contemporary literature. He has been a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Governor General’s Award. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.
ALSO BY ERIC McCORMACK
Inspecting the Vaults
Paradise Motel
The Mysterium
The Dutch Wife
Cloud
PENGUIN
an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
Penguin Canada, 320 Front Street West, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3B6, Canada
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Canada, 1997
Published in Penguin Canada electronic edition, 2016
Copyright © Eric McCormack, 1997
Part of this novel has appeared, in a different form, in
Gates of Paradise
, ed. Alberto Manguel.
Cover Design: David A. Gree / Cover Image: iStockphoto
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication available upon request.
Print ISBN 9780143193470
eBook ISBN: 978-0-14-319825-3
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available
American Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data available
v3.1
for Nancy
OTE ON THE
T
ITLE
John Knox (1513-1572) was the author of the original
First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
. The phrase is now often misapplied: “Regiment” here has its old sense of “rule, magisterial authority,” and has no connection with the later sense of “large body of troops” (Margaret Drabble, ed.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, 1985).