The Mysteries (The Meaning of Children) [Kindle Edition]

Beverly Akerman (Author)

Book Description

Volume 1: Beginning, the first four stories of the award winning short fiction collection, The Meaning of Children. "Tumbalalaika," "The Mysteries," "Broken," and "Pour Un Instant."

Winner, David Adams Richards Prize

CBC – Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers’ Choice Contest Top 10 and many others

A luminous talent…A keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children as well as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces that exist between the everyday events of life. A work with a brilliant sense of story.
~JoAnne Soper-Cook, Judge, 2010 David Adams Richards Prize

It's been over a week since I read this collection of short stories and the characters are still with me…stories about real people, real children, teenagers, adults, in real times. I went through a whole range of emotions when I read them…When the child was sitting on the stairs listening to her parents, I was right there with her. When the adult was sitting by the lake contemplating what happened years before and looking at her present day life, I was sitting across from her, doing the same...I can't remember a book, let alone a collection of short stories, where I could identify so heavily with the emotions and feelings of the characters...this is what good writing…should do for you…it entertained for sure, but it made me think and remember. If you enjoy quality writing and a book that will make you think about where you've been and where you're going. read The Meaning of Children. Highly recommended.
~Martin Crosbie, author of My Temporary Life, ***** (5 stars) on Amazon.com

A collection of 14 short stories which covers the range of experience from the point of view of children, mums, and also aging parents as well. It’s all there in this lovely little book, short stories about life in a family that might just resemble yours.
~Anne Lagacé Dowson, CJAD Radio journalist

Loved your book; read it in one sitting.
~Mutsumi Takahashi, Anchor, CTV News Montreal

This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.
~Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail

Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.
~Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal Gazette

An illumination…[an] epiphany not just of childhood but of life…as children, growing up, as adults - transfigured through the eyes and experience and innocence of children. Akerman's writing is precise - making the landscapes of Montreal and environs come alive with microscopic detail - and impressive in its ability to conjure believable first-person narratives, especially when it comes from the point of view of a child. More than that, Akerman maintains a sense of wonder throughout her collection with writing that borders on poetry, displaying the brilliance of a Jonathan Safran Foer without the modernist literary devices of flipbooks, photographs or typographical gymnastics. Remarkable in its intensity and craft, The Meaning of Children is a book that bears discovering, and Akerman a writer to watch.
~ Samuel Peralta, award-winning poet, author of Sonata Vampirica and others, ***** (5 stars) on Amazon.com

Captures pivotal moments in the underappreciated world of girls & women. Childhood, adolescence, parenthood, or life as a whole, disparate decades and narrative voices braided together by themes of sex, death, & social prejudice.

And love, always love…The Meaning Of Children speaks to all who—though aware the world can be a very dark place—can’t help but long for redemption.

Find Beverly at blogspot.com, or Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Shelfari, Youtube, or Pinterest.

Interview: http://youtu.be/dyOp2wQlxvk

Product Details

• File Size: 181 KB
• Print Length: 59 pages
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B008O41T9U
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,083,441 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Now Beverly Akerman Shares her Poignant Stories in Parcels July 31, 2012

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

At times chance enters our lives and we encounter moments created by a wordsmith that, like it or not, raise memories and experiences that we have either experienced, watched, heard about, or dreamed and the stories in Beverly Akerman's book of short stories THE MEANING OF CHILDREN do just that. They slowly creep into our psyches, clutch a holding place, and stay with us permanently. This collection of the whispers and screams, longings and needs of being a child and the responses of those closest to that child are the works of a magician, a writer of such substance that she is obviously headed to the top echelon of writers of our time.

Some critics are saying that this book is about the underappreciated world of women and perhaps that stance is valid: there certainly are enough tales of anorgasmia, to abortion, to preparing to say the final goodbye to a dying child to the vagaries of holding a household together despite the external (an internal) flaws that creep into crack marriages. But I don't see men being put into negative places just to serve the purpose of making a collection of stories hang together with a theme. No, these stories are all about the influence of bringing a child into the world and the benefits and consequences of the way life changes because of that. And overriding everything else is the panoply of forms of love that transcend all else.

I like the way the author (or agent or some caring one who seeks to gain our attention to this book) states it: `......a girl discovers a fear of heights as her parents' marriage unravels; a thirty-something venture fund manager frets over his daughter's paternity; an orphan whose hands kill whatever they touch is accused of homophobia; a mother of two can only bear to consider abortion in the second person; the wife of a retirement-aged professor finds him unconscious near his computer...The Meaning Of Children speaks to all who--though aware the world can be a very dark place--can't help but long for redemption.' I like this because in the end words fail in attempting to share the variety of emotions this book induces. Beverly Akerman simply knows how to write. She understands contemporary vernacular and uses it to embroider her stories, not to be `with it' like so many authors who seem to need to fill the quota of expletives. She also knows when to leave a story alone, to just let it lift itself and slip out the window, carrying the impact of our emotional changes with it.

Enough said. This is a book of rare sensitivity and masterful creative writing and must surely be shared with as many friends and fellow readers as possible. Grady Harp, July 12 Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Introduction to an Award-Winning Writer September 22, 2012

By Semaphore

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

"The Mysteries" is an introduction to the full suite of award-winning stories by Beverly Akerman... and what a compelling introduction it is, a collection of four stories that draw you into her world. The review that follows covers the entire collection, but it is just as appropriate for "The Mysteries":

Before reading "The Meaning of Children" by Beverly Akerman - winner of the David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction - the last time my jaw dropped over a short story collection was when I re-discovered Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." With both collections, as I read the first few stories, I began to be aware that this was no mere entertainment, but an illumination. In Akerman's case, this epiphany is not just of childhood but of life, our own lives, our entire lives - as children, growing up, as adults - transfigured through the eyes and experience and innocence of children.

Akerman's writing is precise - making the landscapes of Montreal and environs come alive with microscopic detail - and impressive in its ability to conjure believable first-person narratives, especially when it comes from the point of view of a child. More than that, Akerman maintains a sense of wonder throughout her collection with writing that borders on poetry, displaying the brilliance of a Jonathan Safran Foer without the modernist literary devices of flipbooks, photographs or typographical gymnastics.

Remarkable in its intensity and craft, "The Meaning of Children" is a book that bears discovering, and Akerman a writer to watch.

More About the Author

Just in: The Meaning of Children co-winner of the 2012 J.I. Segal Jewish Book Award!

"Beverly Akerman's collection of stories The Meaning of Children manages to capture with both wit and wisdom the effervescence, the indignities, the curiosity, and the fear that are part of a child's eye view of the world. This book is teeming with wit and quality observation." ~ J.I. Segal Award Committee for the Mona Elaine Adilman Prize for English Fiction and Poetry on a Jewish theme, Nov. 14, 2012

After over two decades in molecular genetics research, Beverly Akerman realized she'd been learning more and more about less and less. Skittish at the prospect of knowing everything about nothing, she turned, for solace, to writing. Her story collection The Meaning of Children was released in 2011 by Exile Editions. Winner of the David Adams Richards Prize, a CBC-Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers' Choice Contest Top 10, honourable mention in General Fiction for the Eric Hoffer Prize, and many others.

The Globe & Mail said, "This isn't the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment...[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body." Other recent honours: shortlisted for Aesthetica Magazine's Creative Works Competition, winner of PWAC's 2011 Short Article Award, Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction and nonfiction. Credits include The Globe & Mail, The Hill Times, The Jewish Magazine, Maclean's, The Montreal Gazette, The National Post, The National Review of Medicine, The Toronto Star, CBC Radio One, myriad literary and scientific journals and other publications. She's strangely pleased to believe she's the only Canadian writer to have sequenced her own DNA.

See "How to become an e-book sensation. Seriously" at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/how-to-become-an-e-book-sensation-seriously/article4103854/.

More Beverly at:

Beverly's Blog: http://beverlyakerman.blogspot.com/
Beverly's Facebook pages: http://www.facebook.com/TheMeaningofChildren and http://www.facebook.com/beverly.akerman
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Beverly_Akerman


TV & Radio Interviews: http://bit.ly/nJpCHj; http://bit.ly/reqcN3; http://bit.ly/pOGFc9

Reader and Reviewer Response to Beverly Akerman's The Meaning Of Children:


A keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children as well as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces that exist between the everyday events of life. A work with a brilliant sense of story...Magical, and so refreshing for me to read. I absolutely loved it and I hope it goes on to do marvellous things. Yours is a luminous talent.

~JoAnne Soper-Cook, Author and Judge, the WFNB's 2010 David Adams Richards Prize



Loved your book... read it in one sitting.

~Mutsumi Takahashi, Anchor, CTV News Montreal; Interview


This isn't the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment...[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.

~Katie Hewitt, The Globe & Mail



Akerman holds up our greatest fears, not to dwell on them, but to marvel at our commitment to life, especially to passing it on to others.

~Anne Chudobiak, The Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, and Regina Leader Post

Counter-intuitive to the title, for me these stories resonate with the sad truth of being a grownup. Life is that damn hard and just-under-the-surface tension saturates our existence. But the kids, they know what's going on. They may not understand all the details but they know the score. Akerman nails that sorrow, highlights it with unexpected humour, credits our resilience and almost never skips a beat. As with any collection of stories, some are stronger than others. Lighter Than Air, The Mysteries, and Broken knocked the wind out of me, forcing me to take a long pause and mull them over, sit a while.

~Chris Benjamin, Author of Drive-by Saviours, on Goodreads



Your book The Meaning of Children is great and so are you!

~Anne Lagacé Dowson, CJAD Radio journalist, on Twitter; Interview



Akerman engages with dichotomies. Childhood is that safe, magical, carefree time and place -- but it's also risky, threatening, ominous and dangerous -- full of impenetrable mystery around things seen and experienced, but beyond understanding. And if it's not too much of a simplification or stating the obvious, life and the world are not gentle on children simply for being children...If, as Dostoevsky once remarked, and as is quoted on the collection's frontispiece, "The soul is healed by being with children," it is the tragedy of adulthood that we become so isolated from childhood -- and what children offer us. Artfully, evocatively, Beverly Akerman's The Meaning of Children reminds us of that.

~Darrell Squires, The Western Star


Beverly's background as a scientist, MSc and twenty years as a molecular researcher, inevitably spills into the stories...characters, the settings and her style. Intelligent, objective, open-minded but not clinical, her prose is refreshing and unprejudiced. Her characters are frank and genuine...With The Meaning of Children, we get a beautifully written exposé on the meaning of life.

~Francine Diot-Layton, The Rover



Your book is filled with insight and wisdom and gorgeous moving stories...You are dazzling. (I had read "Pie" long ago. It is just as moving the second time).

~Hal Ackerman (no relation), UCLA Screenwriting Area Co-Chair and author of Stein Stoned and Stein Stung



All I seem to read these days are parenting books. But I think I might be learning more about being a parent from Beverly Akerman's The Meaning of Children than from anywhere else. I can't put it down.

~Jenn Hardy, Writer, Editor and Blogger at http://mamanaturale.ca



I adore your knack for leaving questions hanging in the reader's mind...and then there are those thought provoking zingers tucked neatly inside the last thought, description or action of your narrators. I haven't enjoyed short stories like this since Margaret Atwood, Barbara Gowdy and Alice Munro.

~Rusti Lehay, Writer and Editor



Beverly Akerman is what Alice Munro was supposed to be.

~Mike Rose (received by my publisher, via email)



A life-altering read is so rare for me, and I imagine for many writers, with a critical eye often hard to keep closed while hoping to get caught up and swept away while reading fiction for pleasure...Her stories are as diverse as her changing career path and yet string together a theme as connected as a genetic chain...Children weave their way through every tale...always sparking the reader to question where in all these stories sits their own story.

~Michelle Greysen, Writer, Editor, and Blogger



[You show us how] our childhood experiences affect us forever. And what we bury comes to the surface from time to time....The story about the woman who couldn't touch anything without it dying was sad and funny - loved the boys next door - and I liked PIE - as you have now given me a simple recipe that I can remember for pie crust -I am a baker. And the poor woman who had entered probably menopause and her marriage had broken without her noticing it. She was just so angry and exhausted. So many women I feel are and hide it.

~Carlene Orefici, a Facebook friend I haven't met in real life (yet!)



Just finished "Like Jeremy Irons." That was a tough one. Saying I loved it feels contrary to the agony I'm feeling right now. (Perhaps I shouldn't have settled into it with a glass of wine?) Awesome writing - even if my uterus is cramping!

~Lisa Dalrymple, Winner of The Writers Union of Canada's 2011 Writing for Children Competition



I enjoyed The Meaning of Children so much that I wished there were twice as many stories! If I had to pick one, "Pour Un Instant" was my favourite. I was sad to come to the end of the book.

~Lisa De Nikolits, Author of The Hungry Mirror, on Amazon.ca



@Beverly_Akerman I am devouring your fabulous book The Meaning of Children!

~Alison Palkhivala, Writer and Editor, on Twitter



This morning I wrote to a friend in Victoria. I told her: 'I finished Beverly Akerman's book and really liked it. The theme throughout is children: being a child, being pregnant, abortion, losing a child, being a father, giving a child for adoption. Touchy stuff but she has such kindness, such compassion and infuses hope and love in the saddest situation. She offers unique and surprising insights, it's never sappy or cliché. All this within the short story frame, quite a feat in my opinion. If you can't find her book, I'll send you my copy.' Thank you for writing such an amazing book and for promoting yourself at the gym. It was a bold and creative move. I would have not known about your writing otherwise.

~Diane Des Roches, new gym friend and budding writer