SYDNEY
WARNER
BROOMAN
"Brooman's debut collection of short fiction instantly cements the non-binary writer as a name to watch"
—Chatelaine
Short Fiction
THE PUMP
(Invisible Publishing, 2021)
A Gothic collection of stories featuring carnivorous beavers, art-eaters, and family intrigue, for fans of Alice Munro and Shirley Jackson
The small southern Ontario town known as The Pump lies at the crossroads of this world’s violence—a tainted water supply, an apathetic municipal government, the Gothic decay of rural domesticity—and another’s.
In Brooman’s interconnected stories, no one is immune to The Pump’s sacrificial games. Lighthouse dwellers, Boy Scouts, queer church camp leaders, love-sick and sick-sick writers, nine-year-old hunters, art-eaters—each must navigate the swamp of their own morality while living on land that is always slowly (and sometimes very quickly) killing them.
"Brooman simultaneously locates their stories within a tradition and explodes that tradition for future practitioners."
Toronto Star
"The Pump opens the door to a haunted world that is not easily forgettable"
Quill & Quire
"Brooman's debut collection of short fiction instantly cements the non-binary writer as a name to watch"
Chatelaine
"A strange and satisfying debut which, despite its nightmarish magic, manages to capture something terrifyingly real"
The Miramichi Reader
Nightmarish and yet somehow fantastical, [The Pump] explores the question of morality in a town that represents the world at its most baldly violent"
THIS Magazine
“If you left your small hometown because you were “different” – gay or trans in particular – you will see yourself in this smart, authentic and beautifully written book. If you didn’t, you will be spellbound nonetheless.”
Andrew Dobson
“Brooman’s remarkably self-assured voice remains singular, authentic and wry. The Pump will stay with you, leaving its taste in your mouth: dread and mossy yellow water.”
Broken Pencil
"Brooman has woven an inescapable, ferocious dream of a book. Good luck getting out"
John Elizabeth Stintzi, author of Vanishing Monuments
Praise
For
The Pump
"This is horror in broad daylight. These are the living ghosts that haunt so many of us who grew up here.”
Jia Qing Wilson-Yang, Lambda Award-winning author of Small Beauty
Like nothing I’ve ever read before, these killer beavers, strange diseases, and infectious waters wouldn’t leave my head and drew me back to their world again and again. If only I blurbed delightfully weird books like this for the rest of my life, I’d be happy.”
Jess Taylor, Author of Pauls and Just Pervs
I don’t what is more terrifying: that The Pump exists, or that here, in this wretched, sinking place, you can find something that you desperately love, something that you want to survive. The Pump is an astonishing debut collection from a writer who is just warming up.”
Tom Cull, author of
Bad Animals