num_pages: 347
description: Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters raises a gun and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes.Eight-year-old Hariet known to all as Ari is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary who is purported to eat little girls . . . With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion Jasper an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.As the tumultuous 60s ramp up in Toronto Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope but as Ari grows to adore them shes severed violently from them too when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin.Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s Ari struggles with her fathers legacy and her mothers addictions  testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love the devilish and divine with wit tenacity and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child sculpted by kindness cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination and her families  the one shes born in to and the one she creates.
language: English
title: The Clay Girl
publisher: ECW Press