Durcan, Liam 1967–

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; married; wife's name Florence (a veterinarian); children: two. Education: University of Manitoba, M.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Office—Montreal Neurological Hospital and Institute, 3801 University Ave., Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B4, Canada. E-mail—ldurcan@hotmail.com.

CAREER:

Writer, educator, and neurologist. Montreal Neurological Hospital and Institute, neurologist; McGill University, assistant professor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Quebec Writers' Federation/CBC Quebec short story competition winner, 2004, for "Kick"; Arthur Ellis Award, 2008, for Garcia's Heart.

WRITINGS:

A Short Journey by Car (short stories), Véhicule Press (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 2004.

Garcia's Heart (novel), Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead, Zoetrope, and the Paumanok Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Canadian Liam Durcan is a practicing neurologist and professor who writes fiction on the side. He started writing before going to medical school, but during his medical training and residency he had to put writing aside. After Durcan established a neurological practice, his urge to write returned, nurtured by a 2001 workshop presented by the Quebec Writer's Federation. After learning to edit and revise his work, Durcan successfully submitted numerous short stories to literary journals.

In his debut short story collection, A Short Journey by Car, "Durcan operates successfully on both the brain and the heart," remarked Library Journal reviewer Jim Dwyer. The sixteen stories in the collection tell of "ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations," noted Martin Levin and H.J. Kirchhoff in the Globe and Mail. In the title story, Moscow dentist Yevgeny Mikailovich is whisked away in the night by the secret police. Arriving at his dental office, he is surprised to see Stalin himself wracked with pain from a toothache and requesting that the dentist use a new type of anesthetic. Yevgeny becomes Stalin's de facto personal dentist, though he is terrified that a mistake will lead to a sentence to the Gulag or worse. Yevgeny begins to believe that the now-friendly Stalin will help his academic career, but his newfound success is short-lived.

Gerald, the protagonist of "Control," volunteers for an experimental drug trial, hoping it will pull him out of the doldrums at his insurance company job. The pills he is given evoke a blissful state of near-Nirvana so delightful that Gerald is hesitant to even record his experiences in his treatment journal. Beyond the drug-induced euphoria, however, the hard-edged world of reality waits to reclaim Gerald. In "Nightflight," a contentious cab driver and his passenger get lost in the dark in rural Vermont; they abandon their antagonism toward each other in order to find their way out of an unfamiliar and menacing rural countryside. "Lumier" chronicles the amazement of the Parisian crowd that witnessed the technological marvel of the century: the debut of the first motion picture. In "American Standard" a trucker trying to cross the U.S.-Canada border stakes his financial solvency on the illegal U.S. sale of two hundred toilets that use more water than allowed by federal standards. "For a tale turning on litres per flush, it's strangely solemn," observed reviewer Jim Bartley in the Globe and Mail. "Durcan's greatest gift is for imagining his way into worlds he can't possibly have known," commented Bartley. "Where he soars, in full flight with his muse, is in stories that vault us out of the contemporary."

Durcan followed up on the success of A Short Journey by Car with his first novel Garcia's Heart. Notably, the book won the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award. The story is set in present-day Montreal and the protagonist, Patrick Lazerenko, is a neurologist who works with corporations to test the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. Patrick analyzes brain scans taken while the advertisements are aired to make sure that the desired synaptic responses are taking place. Soon, Patrick's expertise is called upon by the defense in a case against a war criminal in an attempt to prove the defendant's innocence. As it turns out, Patrick has known the defendant, Hernan Garcia, for many years. Hernan, a former Honduran doctor, immigrated to Montreal several years ago and opened a grocery store. He knew Patrick as a young boy, and Hernan was one of the reasons Patrick decided to become a doctor. What follows is a suspenseful plot in which Patrick begins to realize that you can never truly know another person, even as he struggles to prove Hernan's innocence. In an interview in BookLounge Durcan explained: "I wanted the book to be about a person's search for the truth, an exploration of the ways in which we see ourselves and those around us as moral agents." He also went on to note that, "as a reader, I can appreciate how statements like the one I just made can cause all sorts of alarm bells to ring that the book is some sort of prolonged essay in the shape of a novel, which was the last thing I wanted. The story and characters have to come first, both need to be compelling and the conflict and themes that arise have to make emotional and psychological sense to the reader."

Critics seemed to feel that Durcan had achieved his goal, as Garcia's Heart received several accolades. For instance, Barbara Carey, writing in the Toronto Star, called the book an "engrossing debut novel," adding that "Durcan doesn't offer any easy answers in this searching, meticulously observed novel of moral complexity. He does offer plenty to think about." Another positive assessment was proffered by a Kirkus Reviews critic, who remarked that this "shrewd, intricate debut reveals a multitalented artist." The critic went on to comment that the book is "a fascinating construct that asks whether men go wrong in the heart or in the head." Booklist writer Allison Block felt that Durcan "renders satisfyingly complex characters in sharp, vivid prose." Concluding her Quill and Quire review of Garcia's Heart, Emily Donaldson stated that Durcan "produces a restrained, artfully paced work built around its central ethical question, which is not so much ‘what is evil?’ as ‘what, exactly, is the nature of good?’"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2007, Allison Block, review of Garcia's Heart, p. 39.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), October 23, 2004, Jim Bartley, "No First-book Nerves Here," review of A Short Journey by Car, p. D23; November 27, 2004, Martin Levin and H.J. Kirchhoff, "The Globe 100: Of All the Year's Writings, Few Meet the Test," review of A Short Journey by Car, p. D3.

JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, May 18, 2005, Peter W. Graham, review of A Short Journey by Car, p. 2414.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2007, review of Garcia's Heart.

Library Journal, June 15, 2005, Jim Dwyer, review of A Short Journey by Car, p. 62; October 1, 2007, Christopher Bussmann, review of Garcia's Heart, p. 58.

Medical Post (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), February 8, 2005, Kylie Taggart, "Not the Stories of His Life," review of A Short Journey by Car, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, August 20, 2007, review of Garcia's Heart, p. 41.

Quill and Quire, March, 2007, Emily Donaldson, review of Garcia's Heart.

Star (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 29, 2007, Barbara Carey, review of Garcia's Heart.

ONLINE

Absinthe Literary Review,http://www.absinthe-literary-review.com/ (January 15, 2006), biography of Liam Durcan.

BookLounge,http://www.booklounge.ca/ (September 3, 2008), author interview and review of Garcia's Heart.

Bukowski Agency Web site,http://www.thebukowskiagency.com/ (January 15, 2005), biography of Liam Durcan.

Liam Durcan Home Page,http://www.liamdurcan.com (September 3, 2008).