User:Spiritoftheraven/sandbox

Blood Sports (2006), the sequel to Eden Robinson’s novella “Contact Sports” featured in Traplines (1995), is the continuation of cousins Tom Bauer and Jeremy Rieger’s story. The novel is arranged in a multi-narrative non-linear structure compiled of letters, videotape transcripts, and standard narrative. Set five years after the events of “Contact Sports” it revisits the characters’ troubled lives in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside. Tom, now in a relationship with former junkie Paulie Mazenkowski and a new father to their daughter Melody is struggling to secure normalcy for his new family. A series of flashbacks expressed through letters and videotapes reveals how both Paulie and Tom have turned themselves around despite the often dangerous and exploitative situations that manipulative, sociopathic Jeremy had put them in. However, the couple’s involvement in Jeremy’s criminal past is not without consequence- one that threatens to unravel the family. Jeremy’s adversary, a man named Firebug, kidnaps Tom and tortures him while he is held hostage. Eventually Firebug’s gang seizes both Paulie and Melody and detains the entire family in a basement cell. After three days of living in the cell and the electricity gets cut off and the family escapes through a vent. Fleeing to the highway, the family encounters Jeremy riding in a van with Firebug locked in a dog cage inside the vehicle. Jeremy reveals he knew that the family had been taken hostage but didn’t have incentive to save them. The story concludes with Jeremy regaining control over Tom as Tom is recorded shooting Firebug dead on videotape.

Eden Robinson has named Stephen King as one her biggest literary influences. A self-proclaimed book worm, Robinson has shared that between the ages of ten and fourteen she had obsessively read many of the author’s works (http://www.randomhouse.ca/authors/25830/eden-robinson#). At this time the young Robinson claims to have begun writing short stories stating, “I think it was The Shining that made me want to start writing.” (http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=25560). She also includes author and poet Edgar Allen Poe as one of her early influences. Poe was introduced to Robinson by her “grade four teacher, Mr. Mung, who absolutely adored Edgar Allan Poe.” In grade school she studied both The Purloined Letter and The Golden Ladybug. (http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=2556). She has also revealed “I was born on the same day as Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton: January 19. I am absolutely certain that this affects my writing in some way.” (http://www.randomhouse.ca/authors/25830/eden-robinson#). The author has also mentioned various films as having contributed to the development of her aesthetic and cinematic style used in her writings. She specifically notes filmmaker David Cronenberg and his film “Scanners”, highlighting “its infamous exploding head sequence” (http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=7046). Robinson too indicates Sound Garden’s “Blackhole Sun” as influencing her writing. (http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=7046).