books in order

Timothy Findley Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Last of the Crazy People (1967)
  2. The Butterfly Plague (1970)
  3. The Wars (1977)
  4. Famous Last Words (1981)
  5. Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984)
  6. The Telling of Lies (1986)
  7. Stones (1988)
  8. The Stillborn Lover (1993)
  9. Headhunter (1993)
  10. The Piano Man’s Daughter (1995)
  11. Pilgrim (1999)
  12. Elizabeth Rex (2001)
  13. Spadework (2001)

Collections

  1. Dinner Along the Amazon (1984)
  2. Dust to Dust (1997)

Chapbooks

Plays

  1. Can You See Me Yet? (1994)
  2. The Trials of Ezra Pound (1995)

Novellas

  1. You Went Away (1996)

Non fiction

  1. The Life and Death of the SLA (1976)
  2. Inside Memory (1990)
  3. From Stone Orchard (1998)

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Timothy Findley Books Overview

Famous Last Words

Famous Last Words is part thriller, part horror story; it is also a meditation on history and the human soul. In the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament the sordid truth that he alone possessed. Fascinated but horrified, they learn of a dazzling array of characters caught up in a scandal and political corruption.

Stones

Findley exposes the sharp changes in the traditional institutions of love andmarriage and family through a vivid terrain of images and insightful stories. 10,000 print.

Headhunter

When Lilah Kemp, a schizophrenic, unemployed librarian and sometime spiritualist, accidently frees the evil Kurtz from the pages of Heart of Darkness, she searches desperately for a Marlow to help her return him before it is too late.

The Piano Man’s Daughter

The Piano Man’s Daughter is the tale of people who dream in songs two Irish immigrant families facing a new and uncertain future in turn of the century Toronto. Narrated by Charlie Kilworth, whose birth is an echo of his mother’s own illegitimate beginnings, The Piano Man’s Daughter is the lyrical, multi layered tale of Charlie’s mother, Lily, his grandmother Ede, and their family. Lily is a woman pursued by her own demons, ‘making off with the matches just when the fire’s caught hold,’ a beautiful, mad genius, first introduced as she sings in her mother’s belly. Conceived when her mother falls in love with a musician, Lily is born in a field of flowers and grows into an odd, lonely child. As she matures, she becomes more and more alienated from real life, but this doesn’t keep her from having a brief, mysterious affair while she’s a student in wartime England. The result is Charlie, who has perfect pitch and a high tolerance for his mother’s eccentricities. As Lily sinks deeper into madness, her once gentle nature is affected by the dark demons that inhabit her troubled mind. It is only after her death that Charlie, always Lily’s protector and caretaker, is able to tell her story through loving but honest eyes, finding catharsis and hope in the painful but revealing process.

Pilgrim

‘I have lived many times, Doctor Jung. Who knows, as Leda I might have been the mother of Helen or, as Anne, the mother of Mary…
. I was also crippled shepherd in thrall of Saint Teresa of Avila; an Irish stable boy and a maker of stained glass at Chartres…
. I saw the first performance of Hamlet and the last performance of Moliere, the actor. I was a friend to Oscar Wilde and an enemy to Leonardo…
. I am both male and female. I am ageless, and I have no access to death.’On April 15, 1912 ironically the very date on which more than a thousand people lost their lives as the Titanic sank a figure known only as Pilgrim tries to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree. When he is found five hours later, his heart miraculously begins beating again. This isn’t his first attempt to end his life, and it is decided that steps must be taken to prevent Pilgrim from doing himself further harm. Escorted by his beloved friend, Lady Sybil Quartermaine, Pilgrim is admitted to the famous Burgholzi Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich, where he will begin a battle of psyche and soul with Carl Jung, the self professed mystical scientist of the unconscious who is also a slave to his own sexual appetites. Hungry for intellectual and spiritual challenge, Jung is fascinated by this compelling and enigmatic patient who refuses to speak. Slowly, though, Jung coaxes him to reveal the astonishing story of his existence. Pilgrim claims to be ageless and sexless, having lived as both male and female for four thousand years. Asserting that he has witnessed the greatest events of human history, he recounts his involvement with numerous figures who have shaped world culture, including Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James. For Jung, probing this patient’s mind proves a challenge that is both frustrating and enlightening. Is Pilgrim delusional? Are his memories only dreams or something far more fantastic? Is it madness or a miracle? These interactions with Pilgrim have a profound and unexpected effect on the esteemed and controversial doctor’s own life and sanity, for his dreams soon become entwined with those of his patient’s, while the anchor of his soul, his marriage, begins to disintegrate. The puzzle called Pilgrim will seemingly lead either to Jung’s salvation or his damnation. Beautifully written, deeply evocative, and filled with a fascinating cast of historical characters, Pilgrim is both a richly layered story of a man’s search for his own destiny and an absorbing, mind expanding novel that explores the timeless questions of humanity and consciousness.

Elizabeth Rex

Based on the original stage production at the Stratford Festival of Canada, directed by Martha Henry. In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley’s Governor General Award winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616. The night the Queen’s Lover will be executed, by the Queen’s decree.

Spadework

Lust. Infidelity. Betrayal. Murder. On a summer evening in Stratford, Ontario, the errant thrust of agardener’s spade slices a telephone cable into instant silence. The resulting disconnection is devastating. With the failure of one call to reach a house, an ambitious young actor becomes the victim of sexual blackmail. The blocking of a second call leads tragically to murder. And when a Bell Canada repairman arrives to mend the broken line, his innocent yet irresistible male beauty has explosive consequences. In Spadework, Timothy Findley, master storyteller and playwright, has created an electric wordplay of infidelity and morality set on the stage of Canada s preeminent theater town. In this fictional portrait, intrigue, passion, and ambition are always waiting in the wings. Findley peoples the town with theater folk, artists, writers, and visitors both welcome and unwelcome, and with lives that are immediately recognizable as ‘Findley esque’ the lonely, the dispossessed, and the sexually troubled.A story that ripples with ever widening repercussions, a sensual, witty, and completely absorbing novel, Spadework is another Timothy Findley winner.

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