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CHRIS CANDER

Author

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    • A Gracious Neighbor
    • The Weight of a Piano
    • Whisper Hollow
    • 11 Stories
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Reviews

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Please direct all media requests to Katie Kurtzman, KTK Publicity

Featured Reviews of A GRACIOUS NEIGHBOR

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Cander cleverly combines sharply observed satire, a keen sense of place, and a feminist sensibility.” …read more

Featured Reviews of THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO

KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)
“Deftly plotted and well written, a gentle meditation on the healing power of art — and its limitations….Cander grabs the reader in her bravura, thickly detailed opening pages [and] expertly parcels out her revelations [as] she builds parallel narratives [toward] an odd but beautiful finale.”…read more

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED, BOXED REVIEW)
“Cander brilliantly and convincingly expresses music and visual art in her writing, capturing both within a near-alien but surprisingly stunning landscape.”…read more

LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)
“VERDICT: From award-winning author Cander (Whisper Hollow), this beautiful tale of the intersecting stories of Katya and Clara, two strong women working hard to rebuild their shattered lives, is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.” …read more

BOOKPAGE (STARRED REVIEW)
“Cander’s unadorned prose composes some truly beautiful descriptions of the joy of music.”…read more

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Immense, intense and imaginative….The Weight of a Piano is about memory and identity….Cander is a smart, deft storyteller [and] understands how something as beloved as a piano can actually be a burden.”…read more

MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
“The reader is left to contemplate loss and legacy, the novel’s notion of ‘poetry and color and imagination’ lingering like the notes of a distant song….Cander proves herself masterful.”…read more

THE GUARDIAN
“Like Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, The Weight of a Piano imagines what might happen if something designed for the nonverbal expression of thoughts and feelings were pressed into the service of speaking for a range of characters.” …read more

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Featured Reviews of WHISPER HOLLOW

KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)
“Cander divinely delves into multiple points of view, crafting a collage of vibrant, layered characters while charting six decades of poignant, precise moments. A distinctive novel that sublimely measures the distressed though determined heartbeat of a small mountain community.”…read more

SHELF AWARENESS (STARRED REVIEW)
“Cander weaves together the stories of these varied characters across nearly five decades with skill and grace, and in her hands, Whisper Hollow grows into much more than the sum of its many parts. The result is a memorable novel about the bonds of town and family, the strength of friendships in unlikely places and the power of secrets to shape a life–or many lives–often without anyone even recognizing it.”…read more

HOUSTON CHRONICLE
“Whisper Hollow” is wonderful. It’s carefully written, unpredictable, sexy when it should be and scary when it has to be. Religion plays a significant role, winding through the plot like veins of coal in a mine. In its depiction of long-buried family secrets and the cost of keeping them, Cander’s book channels Faulkner. Some sections are reminiscent of D.H. Lawrence, who grew up in an English coal-mining village and wrote about working-class mining life in “Sons and Lovers.”…read more

GLAMOUR
Whisper Hollow is unbearably sad at times, but enrapturing all the way through…read more

MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE
A multigenerational story set in a West Virginia coal mining town, “Whisper Hollow” is so vivid a tale of twisted devotion, true love and tragedy that you will emerge from it wiping coal dust from your eyes…read more

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Featured Reviews for 11 STORIES

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)
Her conclusion provides grounds for belief in the possibility of redemption; her sensitivity ensures that this novel will appeal to anyone with a story to tell, a group that includes us all…read more

KIRKUS REVIEWS
A wonderfully clever compilation…read more

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A Gracious Neighbor
The Weight of a Piano
Whisper Hollow
11 Stories
Children’s

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