Quill & Quire says "This novel packs more emotional wallop than many books twice or three times its length, which is a testament to Robillard's surgically precise prose...This makes The Road to Atlantis a welcome rarity: a multi-generational family saga that zips along at the pace of a thriller."
Thursday, September 3, 2015
The Road to Atlantis -- Book Review
Quill & Quire says "This novel packs more emotional wallop than many books twice or three times its length, which is a testament to Robillard's surgically precise prose...This makes The Road to Atlantis a welcome rarity: a multi-generational family saga that zips along at the pace of a thriller."
Friday, August 14, 2015
CBC's All In A Day Book Panel
CBC's All In A Day Book Panel chose The Road To Atlantis as one of its "great picks for reading on a summer day" this month. Check out their post, or go straight to the source.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Kingston WritersFest 2015
I will be appearing at Kingston WritersFest again this year, alonside Nino Ricci, Greg Hollingshead, Marina Endicott and others as part of their Saturday Night SpeakEasy, on September 26, 2015 from 9:00pm - 11:00pm. This will be one of the first offical events to launch my new novel The Road to Atlantis.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The Road To Atlantis
My longtime publisher, Turnstone Press, has picked up my latest novel -- tentatively titled, The Road To Atlantis. It is scheduled for release in the Fall of 2015. More information to follow.Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Kingston WritersFest
I will be appearing at Kingston WritersFest on Saturday, September 27th @ 12:00pm with fellow authors Ted Barris (The Great Escape) and Frances Itani (Defeaning) as part of "From War to War" -- a discussion moderated by Jan Walter.
Contact www.kingstonwritersfest.ca for tickets and details.
Contact www.kingstonwritersfest.ca for tickets and details.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Drift now available in E-book format
Drift is just the first of my three novels to be re-released as an e-book through amazon.ca this month. Leaving Wyoming and Houdini's Shadow will be live later this week. Kindle users will pay only $9.99.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
AOTM -- Author of the Month
A new interview is available on my publisher's site, where I am author of the month for March. Check it out. And while you're there, take a look at the great writing on offer at Turnstone.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Chris Stesky's Review of Drift in the Recorder and Times
Robillard Contemplates War's Damages
What really happens when a naive young soldier goes to war?
That's what Leo Brent Robillard wanted to explore in writing his third novel, Drift, about two boys from the Canadian prairies who join the army to fight in the Second Boer War in South Africa in 1899-1900.
"It doesn't matter why a soldier goes to war, but what happens to him in war," Robillard said in an interview this week. He teaches English, writing and international studies at Thousand Islands Secondary School.
Fired up by patriotic stories in the Canadian newspapers, Mason Black wants to win glory on the battlefield. His friend Will Regan, the novel's main character, is more introspective and far less certain of his goals, so he merely drifts along.
For long weeks, they move across the veldt with the Winnipeg Rifles' "A" Company, whipped by sand storms, beaten down by high temperatures, marching and drilling endlessly, but seeing no action.
When Will fights in his first battle, his training overcomes his reluctance to kill and he shows himself to be what his superiors would call a good soldier.
Robillard has never fought in war, but he paints a convincing picture of the noise, blood, dust, confusion and terror of battle.
While Will does his duty, he questions the morality of the war. It's hard for him to see the retreating Boer farmers as the enemy, and yet in battle he kills.
Who is the enemy, really, Robillard seems to ask.
"Evil is everywhere, in all of us. You want to think of it as good guys and bad guys, but I want to show the damages wrought by us, not just by them."
Will encounters evil in a fellow soldier, Kadinsky, a sadist and ex-convict, who ties up a young black boy and beats and abuses him for sport. Threatened with injury or worse by Kadinsky if he reports the incident, Will faces another decision in his moral growth.
If this incident reminds some of a certain dark moment in Canadian military history during the war in Somalia, that was Robillard's intention.
He had finished the first draft of the novel in 2008.
"When Canada became involved in the war in Afghanistan, the novel was even more relevant."
The Boer War was another example of Canada's participation in a small foreign war.
Today, Robillard says, our involvement in the Boer War is considered "politically incorrect" and there was no effort in 1999 to commemorate the centennial of the war.
Whether the British went to war to fight the Boers for enslaving the Africans or whether they sought the rich diamond mines in Boer control is not the issue in Drift.
Other characters change as they confront the boredom and horror of war: Mason, who thinks he can do something that matters by being a soldier; Claire, the Australian nurse escaping her parents' control, who provides the novel's love interest; Barrett, a pretentious war correspondent, who spouts patriotic platitudes and provides some comic relief; Robert, an anthropologist (mentioned in Robillard's first novel, Leaving Wyoming) who seems an enigma to Will; Campbell, the reconnaissance balloonist whose mixed-race family moves with the soldiers.
Robillard's powers of description are poetic, while his action is tight, forceful, compelling. In Will he has created a sympathetic character who matures into a man in just a few short months.
The result is a poignant story of war's reality and what it does to people.
Robillard enjoys writing about people living through changing times. He is working on a novel, tentatively titled Walking Iron, about Mohawks and the Great Depression.
He believes we are going into another major transition period.
"Poverty moves me. The imbalance in the world bothers me."
He and his wife have taken student groups to Nicaragua for four years now. They are always struck by the poverty, illness and other challenges the people face.
"Yet in the evening, they sit around and laugh."
It's made him think about what's really important in life, to think about downsizing and living more simply.
"We are over-entertained," he said, wishing people could turn off their electronic devices, take a walk in the woods and just think.
He's also writing a book, now titled Company of Water, about a couple who lose their daughter and how they cope with this unfathomable loss.
"I call it a claustrophobic story, in that it deals with what's really important."
When something happens to your family, you discover that's more important than anything else in life. Everything else that seemed to matter falls away, as if it doesn't exist.
Unlike his other novels with their historical settings and the research that goes with them, Company of Water is based on a 35-second scare when Robillard thought his daughter was lost at a beach. The novel will be an intimate, personal account of terrible loss, and Robillard wants to be sure he's "got it right."
Robillard hopes to be invited to read from Drift at writers' festivals in the region next year.
He had a receptive audience at the country club in Bath, where his reading from the novel led to a great number of questions and discussion.
Drift is published by Turnstone Press, in Winnipeg, and is available in local bookstores. His other novels are Leaving Wyoming and Houdini's Shadow.
Recorder and Times
What really happens when a naive young soldier goes to war?
That's what Leo Brent Robillard wanted to explore in writing his third novel, Drift, about two boys from the Canadian prairies who join the army to fight in the Second Boer War in South Africa in 1899-1900.
"It doesn't matter why a soldier goes to war, but what happens to him in war," Robillard said in an interview this week. He teaches English, writing and international studies at Thousand Islands Secondary School.
Fired up by patriotic stories in the Canadian newspapers, Mason Black wants to win glory on the battlefield. His friend Will Regan, the novel's main character, is more introspective and far less certain of his goals, so he merely drifts along.
For long weeks, they move across the veldt with the Winnipeg Rifles' "A" Company, whipped by sand storms, beaten down by high temperatures, marching and drilling endlessly, but seeing no action.
When Will fights in his first battle, his training overcomes his reluctance to kill and he shows himself to be what his superiors would call a good soldier.
Robillard has never fought in war, but he paints a convincing picture of the noise, blood, dust, confusion and terror of battle.
While Will does his duty, he questions the morality of the war. It's hard for him to see the retreating Boer farmers as the enemy, and yet in battle he kills.
Who is the enemy, really, Robillard seems to ask.
"Evil is everywhere, in all of us. You want to think of it as good guys and bad guys, but I want to show the damages wrought by us, not just by them."
Will encounters evil in a fellow soldier, Kadinsky, a sadist and ex-convict, who ties up a young black boy and beats and abuses him for sport. Threatened with injury or worse by Kadinsky if he reports the incident, Will faces another decision in his moral growth.
If this incident reminds some of a certain dark moment in Canadian military history during the war in Somalia, that was Robillard's intention.
He had finished the first draft of the novel in 2008.
"When Canada became involved in the war in Afghanistan, the novel was even more relevant."
The Boer War was another example of Canada's participation in a small foreign war.
Today, Robillard says, our involvement in the Boer War is considered "politically incorrect" and there was no effort in 1999 to commemorate the centennial of the war.
Whether the British went to war to fight the Boers for enslaving the Africans or whether they sought the rich diamond mines in Boer control is not the issue in Drift.
Other characters change as they confront the boredom and horror of war: Mason, who thinks he can do something that matters by being a soldier; Claire, the Australian nurse escaping her parents' control, who provides the novel's love interest; Barrett, a pretentious war correspondent, who spouts patriotic platitudes and provides some comic relief; Robert, an anthropologist (mentioned in Robillard's first novel, Leaving Wyoming) who seems an enigma to Will; Campbell, the reconnaissance balloonist whose mixed-race family moves with the soldiers.
Robillard's powers of description are poetic, while his action is tight, forceful, compelling. In Will he has created a sympathetic character who matures into a man in just a few short months.
The result is a poignant story of war's reality and what it does to people.
Robillard enjoys writing about people living through changing times. He is working on a novel, tentatively titled Walking Iron, about Mohawks and the Great Depression.
He believes we are going into another major transition period.
"Poverty moves me. The imbalance in the world bothers me."
He and his wife have taken student groups to Nicaragua for four years now. They are always struck by the poverty, illness and other challenges the people face.
"Yet in the evening, they sit around and laugh."
It's made him think about what's really important in life, to think about downsizing and living more simply.
"We are over-entertained," he said, wishing people could turn off their electronic devices, take a walk in the woods and just think.
He's also writing a book, now titled Company of Water, about a couple who lose their daughter and how they cope with this unfathomable loss.
"I call it a claustrophobic story, in that it deals with what's really important."
When something happens to your family, you discover that's more important than anything else in life. Everything else that seemed to matter falls away, as if it doesn't exist.
Unlike his other novels with their historical settings and the research that goes with them, Company of Water is based on a 35-second scare when Robillard thought his daughter was lost at a beach. The novel will be an intimate, personal account of terrible loss, and Robillard wants to be sure he's "got it right."
Robillard hopes to be invited to read from Drift at writers' festivals in the region next year.
He had a receptive audience at the country club in Bath, where his reading from the novel led to a great number of questions and discussion.
Drift is published by Turnstone Press, in Winnipeg, and is available in local bookstores. His other novels are Leaving Wyoming and Houdini's Shadow.
Recorder and Times
Arlene Smith's Review at Indigo Books
Some authors write about war to glorify it. Others write to condemn it. Leo Brent Robillard writes to try to understand it and to help his readers grapple with it as well. His newest book, Drift, explores the complexities of the Boer War with clear-eyed acceptance of the brutality and curious insight into the reasons why people end up in war zones.
Robillard is a poet and educator. That those are character traits and not jobs is evident in his writing. His books are literary works with a poetic feel that comes through even when he is describing the shattering effects of combat. His books entertain, but they teach us something as well.
In Drift, two young men from Manitoba sign up to fight in the Second Boer War. Will goes to the heat and dust of South Africa with trepidation; Mason with enthusiasm and bravado. While there they meet an Australian nurse fleeing from an overprotective family, a journalist lubricated for his journey with generous portions of alcohol, and a hot air balloon pilot conscripted into service as an elevated spy. They discover that it doesn't matter how or why people drift into war, once there, all face the same uncertainty, terror, and search for love that happen when a shared, but misunderstood, humanity hangs in the balance.
Robillard explores the idea that often people don't go to war, they go away from something else. Drift is a beautifully written story of a war that hasn't been explored to the same extent as the World Wars.
Indigo Books
Robillard is a poet and educator. That those are character traits and not jobs is evident in his writing. His books are literary works with a poetic feel that comes through even when he is describing the shattering effects of combat. His books entertain, but they teach us something as well.
In Drift, two young men from Manitoba sign up to fight in the Second Boer War. Will goes to the heat and dust of South Africa with trepidation; Mason with enthusiasm and bravado. While there they meet an Australian nurse fleeing from an overprotective family, a journalist lubricated for his journey with generous portions of alcohol, and a hot air balloon pilot conscripted into service as an elevated spy. They discover that it doesn't matter how or why people drift into war, once there, all face the same uncertainty, terror, and search for love that happen when a shared, but misunderstood, humanity hangs in the balance.
Robillard explores the idea that often people don't go to war, they go away from something else. Drift is a beautifully written story of a war that hasn't been explored to the same extent as the World Wars.
Indigo Books
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Art Show & Sale
Join us for Art, Literature, Food, and Drink!
The Loyalist Golf & Country Club is hosting an art show and sale on Sunday, December 11th from 3:00pm -- 7:00pm. There will be wine tasting and tapas (courtesy of Huff Estates) between 3 and 5, after which I will read from Drift. The event is open to the public; however, reservations are necessary should you wish to stay on for dinner at 6:00pm. Details concerning dinner reservations, etc. can be found here. Come out and do some original Christmas shopping, and pick up a signed copy of Drift.
Loyalist Golf & Country Club, 1 Loyalist Boulevard, Bath, Ontario
The Loyalist Golf & Country Club is hosting an art show and sale on Sunday, December 11th from 3:00pm -- 7:00pm. There will be wine tasting and tapas (courtesy of Huff Estates) between 3 and 5, after which I will read from Drift. The event is open to the public; however, reservations are necessary should you wish to stay on for dinner at 6:00pm. Details concerning dinner reservations, etc. can be found here. Come out and do some original Christmas shopping, and pick up a signed copy of Drift.
Loyalist Golf & Country Club, 1 Loyalist Boulevard, Bath, Ontario
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Drift Review -- Winnipeg Free Press
Novel's pacing gives sense of living in war zone
Review by Joanne Epp, Winnipeg Free Press
CANADA'S role in the Boer War of 1899-1902 was a source of pride, giving a boost to Canadian nationalism.
Ontario writer Leo Brent Robillard's third novel, a quietly gripping story set during the early months of the war, acknowledges that pride and idealism and firmly subordinates it to a portrayal of life in the field as being at once uglier and more mundane.
Will Regan is just out of high school in Portage la Prairie when he enlists, along with his childhood friend Mason Black. A young man of uncertain convictions, he's not even certain why he enlisted. Mason, by contrast, is restless and eager to fight for the British Empire.
In South Africa they meet Claire, an Australian nurse escaping her parents' marriage plans for her; Robert, Will's silent tent-mate, escaping impending bankruptcy and a misguided marriage; and Campbell Scott, a disillusioned veteran whose hot-air balloon has been requisitioned for reconnaissance missions.
Will grows to care for each of them in different ways, while growing slowly more distant from Mason.
The title evokes the sand and dust that are ever-present in the dry South African landscape. At the same time it evokes Will himself: diffident, unambitious and -- in his own mind-- cowardly.
And the word drift brings to mind the whole contingent of soldiers sent into battle at Paardeberg. In the words of Campbell: "We are the expendables, my boy. Flotsam on the tides of history. Driftwood."
A drift is also the South African term for a ford, but Robillard doesn't explain that. Nor does he tell the reader what a kopje or a donga is.
That doesn't matter, though, because he gives the reader such a strong sensory impression of the landscape as the soldiers perceive it: the dizzying heat, and the resulting sunburn and parching thirst; the pervasive dust and sand; the sucking mud of the Modder River.
The narrative's pacing gives a sense of what it's like to live in a war zone. It's a slow momentum punctuated by sudden incidents of violence: the army's sorties against the Boer, and eventually the battle at Paardeberg, but also the beating and rape of a black boy and the consequences for Will when he witnesses the act.
Robillard's two previous novels, Leaving Wyoming and Houdini's Shadow, were also published by the Winnipeg-based literary house Turnstone Press.
Here his prose is economical without being sparse, tending toward short sentences, even sentence fragments. It's a style somewhat reminiscent of Hemingway, and it suits his subject well.
Unfortunately, he sometimes pushes it to the point of being irritating: "But that's selfish. And not entirely true. So she keeps it to herself. Because it feels better to hurt."
One might expect a novel like this to be about disillusionment, but it isn't exactly. While somewhat reluctant from the start, Will never had grand ambitions or illusions about the war, while Mason, who did, doesn't lose them.
Nevertheless, he does find that South Africa is not at all what he expected. He learns that he is capable of killing and, what's more, of deciding to kill. He also learns that, in the heat of battle, self-preservation can trump solidarity.
Will is nonplussed by his first encounter with the enemy. On the troop train he listens to Mason speak wistfully of killing Boers; then, when the men disembark, there are Dutch farm girls offering them water and cakes.
His final encounter with the surrendering Boer is just as anticlimactic. Again, he sits down to eat with them. They are not ashamed of their defeat, and neither is Will elated at the British victory. As he writes to his uncle, he had merely done his job.
Ottawa Launch only three days away!
A reminder to come out to celebrate the Ottawa launch of Drift, this Wednesday, November 9th at 7:00pm -- Collected Works Bookstore (1242 Wellington Street). Do some early Christmas shopping, too. Support your local bookstores.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Night Table Recommendations
My bedside is littered with books – a slow slide of magazines, hard covers, and paperbacks loosely grouped into three piles. Read, partially read, and wishful thinking. Novels, travel guides, histories, current affairs. I’m a jack of all trades, plagued by too many interests and too little time. But I find the paper mountain comforting. After all, books do furnish a room.
However, my favourites, if I’m honest, are the novels. I like fiction that goes to places others fear to tread. I want a book to grab me by the throat and squeeze. Hard.
No one does this like Cormac McCarthy. I hardly know where to start, but if I can pick only one, then make it Blood Meridian. A teenage boy joins a band of marauding Indian hunters along the Mexican border in the middle of the 19th century, drawn by the perverse charisma of a man they call the Judge. The ensuing, mythic anti-quest is served up in stark, unstoppable prose. It is dark, harrowing, and so casually violent that the reader is almost ashamed at his compulsion to read on.
McCormac’s Canadian counterpart for terse, muscular prose, has to be Kenneth J. Harvey. But unlike McCormac’s novels, Harvey’s violence seethes just beneath the surface. Inside is the story of wrongfully convicted criminal, Myrden. Released through newly minted DNA technology, Myrden tries desperately to re-adapt to life on the outside. But justice, it seems, has not only failed him. Cruelty and meanness exist everywhere he turns – among his friends, among his family. The reader is lead by the nose through the claustrophobic annals of Myrden’s mind toward an inevitable conclusion, a twisted chance at catharsis and redemption.
Coureurs de Bois, by first-time novelist Bruce MacDonald, is equally confident and self-assured. Randall "Cobb" Seymour, also recently released from prison, has no problem adjusting to civilian life. He simply chooses to supersede it, building an empire out of illegal cigarette sales, weed, prescription drugs and other scams, with the help of a
visionary economics student from the University of Ottawa. The testosterone is thick here. Set in a seedy stretch of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, Coureurs de Bois is a novel where the insane speak oracular truths and a female Christ figure – complete with virgin birth – attempts to kill herself, shocked by the "absolute horror of the human condition." The characters here are full-blown and fascinating. The pacing is immaculate. The humour black, intelligent, and just as likely to reinforce a stereotype as deflect one.
On par with the insanity of Coureurs de Bois, and set in a more relevant time period, is Elle, by Douglas Glover. Satirical and Rabelaisian in its excesses, Elle tells the story of a young French woman shipwrecked and alone in the New World. A true hedonist, Elle abandons all her courtly, aristocratic upbringing, and by novel’s end, reinvents herself as shamanesque chimera. Pyretic violence brings the novel to its close, leaving the reader to sort through well-springs of spiritual imagery and symbolism, both real and imagined.
Last, but not least, Robert Hough’s The Culprits is one of the best novels I’ve read in the last few years. It has the indiscernible quality of readability. You simply cannot put it down. Hank Wallins, a former merchant sailor cum lonely computer operator, lives through a near-death experience, which propels him into the arms of a mail-order bride. Anna Verkoskova née Mikhailovna, a near-pretty student from St. Petersburg with a wandering eye, draws the unwitting Hank into a baffling and complicated tale of love, loss, and ... international terrorism. Woven by one of the most ingenious and fascinating narrators in recent history, this novel juggles the madcap with the sober, the tragic with the comic. It flirts with the melodramatic as often as it plays with the improbable, without ever actually crossing either line. Its humour and wit give weight to its eventual calamity, and its voice – full of the sing-song qualities of Slavic constructions – is as endearing as a Dr. Seuss fable. In short, it is a fine balance.
Help Kick Off The Small Press Book Fair
This Friday night ( November 4th) I will be reading from Drift at the Carleton Tavern (223 Armstrong Street @ Parkdale) to help kick off this year's Small Press Book Fair. Also appearing on Friday will be Nicholas Lea and Lillian Necakov. Doors open at 7:00pm.
If you can't make this, be sure to check out the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 JackPurcell Lane) on Saturday (November 5th) for the best of the independent press.
If you can't make this, be sure to check out the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 JackPurcell Lane) on Saturday (November 5th) for the best of the independent press.
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Good Time Was Had By All
I was thrilled -- and honestly surprised -- by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd on Saturday at the Joshua Bates Centre. It was great to see so many familiar faces out, and equally exciting to meet so many new people.
I hope all those who purchased a copy of Drift, or one of my previous novels, draw as much enjoyment from reading them as I did in writing them. Thank you all again for your support.
I strongly encourage you to rate the books -- and perhaps even wite a brief review -- on the Chapters and Amazon websites.
I hope all those who purchased a copy of Drift, or one of my previous novels, draw as much enjoyment from reading them as I did in writing them. Thank you all again for your support.
I strongly encourage you to rate the books -- and perhaps even wite a brief review -- on the Chapters and Amazon websites.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Thanks and Anticipation
Thank you to everyone who came out to the Hometown Launch for Drift in Carleton Place last night. The food was great and the company was even better.
Looking forward to another great night in Athens tonight: Joshua Bates Centre, 1 Main Street West @ 7:00pm!
Looking forward to another great night in Athens tonight: Joshua Bates Centre, 1 Main Street West @ 7:00pm!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Ottawa Small Press Book Fair
Aside from the fact that I will be in attendance and signing copies of Drift, there are many reasons to check out this year's Small Press Book Fair: numerous authors, book publishers, and fine literary journals will be peddling their wares. Hope you can make it. Saturday, November 5th from 11:00am - 5:00pm @ The Purcell Community Centre, 320 JackPurcell Lane (on Elgin), Ottawa.
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