So This Is Love

In September 2004, Gilbert Reid’s first book, So This Is Love: Lollipop and Other Stories, was published by Key Porter Books. It was named one of 100 best books of the year by the Globe & Mail, was praised by Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Macmillan, and is available in the US in e-book and hardcover editions from Macmillan.

In nine dramatic, vividly etched stories, So This Is Love explores love and hate, the tangle of ambivalence, fascination, perversity, and power at the heart of intimate human relationships.

“Powerfully rendered and suspenseful.” — Joyce Carol Oates

Lava and Other Stories

In a Sicilian seaside town, on the eve of a film festival, an alcoholic journalist spirals towards annihilation. In the golden twilight of the dolce vita, while terrorists kill, a group of women in Rome happily trade lovers like toys. In the bucolic heart of rustic England, a perfect summer’s day ends when a handsome terrorist boards a train. In Toronto, when he is beaten to a pulp, a hulking but childlike inmate in an asylum catches a glimpse of the toxic man he once was, and of the explosive accident that turned him into the creature he now is. In California, a brilliant cynical Hollywood producer grudgingly faces the ruins of love. After a flood, a little girl confronts the reality of death.

“Very powerful, poetic and nasty and tough” — Anna Porter

Son of Two Fathers

Son of Two Fathers is a sprawling, rollicking adventure set in Renaissance Italy in the years 1536-1544, cowritten with my extraordinary friend the late Jacqueline Park.

“Gilbert Reid is the perfect collaborator on Son of Two Fathers, the final volume of the late Jacqueline Park’s bestselling Grazia dei Rossi trilogy. As Jackie’s friend and collaborator, Reid shared her passion for historical fiction and adds his own deep knowledge of Italian history and culture, while embellishing the story with ribald humor, scandalous intrigue, and page-turning drama.” — Sandra Martin, author of A Good Death