Angie Abdou was born in Moose Jaw in May of 1969. She didn’t get nominated for the Giller Prize and she didn’t get invited to the fancy-pants festivals (the ones where publishers are often required to cough up dough in return for having their authors selected), but she did make an extraordinarily literary debut with her collection of stories, Anything Boys Can Do.
The atypical title story describes a woman watching her young nephew compete in a brutal championship wrestling match, almost losing his eye. More frequently, Abdou describes young women exploring beyond traditional limitations, including monogamy. A father introduces his daughter to a golfing buddy. “This is my daughter. She’s a Buddhist. This week.” Overall, there’s an alluring combination of tomboy-ish bravado and sophisticated humour. “Why is it that nobody in GAP World ever gets a cold sore?” But there’s more to Abdou than brisk asides and clever dialogue. In ‘Bruised Apples’, a childless and uninspired academic leaves home to work in a friend’s orchard and to collect her thoughts, only to conclude her marriage is worth saving.
In Abdou's first novel, The Bone Cage, Digger, an 85-kilo wrestler, and Sadie, a 26-year-old speed swimmer, are nearing the end of their athletic careers but striving to win a gold medal at the Olympics. They are racing against time as their bodies will soon no longer allow to compete at the top levels of their respective sports. According to press material, "The blossoming relationship between Digger and Sadie is tested in the intense months leading up to the Olympics, which, as both of them are painfully aware, will be the realization or the end of a life's dream." The novel was completed while Abdou was still swimming competitively at the Masters level. She began competitive speed swimming at age four.
After completing a BA in English at the University of Regina, Abdou moved to London, Ontaro for graduate work in English at the University of Western Ontario. She briefly lived in Calgary before moving to Fernie, where she teaches at the College of the Rockies while living with her husband, Marty, and her son, Oliver. In 2008 she was invited to give the Beth Maloney Memorial speech to the AGM of the College of BC Physiotherapists, discussing her novel and sports medicine.
BOOKS:
Anything Boys Can Do (Thistledown, 2006). 1-897235-12-7 $18.95
The Bone Cage (NeWest Press, 2007). 978-1-897126-17-2 $22.95 CDN/US
[BCBW 2008] "Fiction" "Women"
Anything Boys Can Do
Press Release (2006)
from Thistledown
In an irreverent vivisection of cultural myths of gender such as “women are born nurturers” or “men are inherently more aggressive”, Abdou's debut collection about likeable women running wild reveals the silent contracts that lie at the underbelly of polished marriages, platonic friendships, barroom flirtations and not-so-meaningless sex. Abdou’s characters have an easy honesty, a dirty-kneed grace that reminds us of girls who climbed trees and pulled the wings off butterflies. Now grown up, they offer biting and insouciant revelations into sexual stereotypes, fear of intimacy, and anger management. Abdou’s stories brim with the emotional, moral and social conundrum of living GAP commercial feminism on a thrift store budget, and provide a deliciously self-effacing joyride through the girl slums of Boystown.
