PRESS
Katherine trails her ghost
- More magazine
Katherine responds to the Japan Earthquake - Ottawa Citizen
Katherine is named one of 35 Amazing Canadian Women!
- Canadian Living magazine
Katherine talks to Shelagh Rogers
- The Next Chapter, CBC Podcast
(make sure to click on the Nov 15th Podcast)
PRAISE
"Reading The Ghost Brush is like entering a series of paintings that illuminate the floating world. The detail is exquisite. The story had to be told."
—Frances Itani author of Deafening
“... a moving and fascinating quest ... is at once a work of painstaking historical research and a bold leap of the imagination.”
—Margaret Macmillan author of Paris 1919
“I get shivers when Katherine Govier describes Hokusai’s daughter. It’s as if she is channeling O-Ei, this Japanese woman trapped in that long-lost world.”
—Joy Kogawa author of Obasan
"This mesmerizing novel..."
University of Alberta, New Trails Magazine
Govier's expansive historical novel turns the spotlight on Oei, the "ghost brush" attributed to some of her father's famous prints, and a character that drives a compulsively readable novel.
- The Globe and Mail
If The Ghost Brush doesn't make you want to travel to Japan and see multiple views of Mount Fuji and the waves at Kanagawa, you may already be dead, at least in a literary sense.
- The National Post
A sweeping saga of 19th century Japan, where Oei, the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, emerges from her historical sidekick assignment into a bigger, poignant role as a pioneering talent in her own right.
- The Toronto Star
Profile of the artist as unlikely feminist...
Katherine Govier returns to Japan for her latest exquisite novel, the wildly ambitious The Ghost Brush.
It's the lyrical interplay of her creations that propels The Ghost Brush -- Oei and her father, Oei and von Siebold, and Oei and Shino -- that are thrilling in their elegant portrayal of need.
Oei feels the need to be subservient to her father, and also the desire to serve no one save herself -- and who hasn't had that confusing, yet simple, push-pull?"
- The Hamilton Spectator
WORD OF MOUTH
Named as Staff Pick by the Halifax Public Library
Bella's Book Shelves
Four Stars - Chapters Indigo
EXCERPTED IN
Ars Medica
Exile Magazine
Art and War - Tightrope Press
READERS WRITE
"I learned a lot and was so taken in by Oei's world and her struggles and the amazing landscape of her time. Your language was often so poetic and otherwise so compelling; I was captivated! I am and was so impressed and felt immersed in a world and an adventure I couldnt have imagined. Also, I thought your ending of the novel wonderful!" - Dorothy Glick, Toronto
"I wished you were around so I could tell you how totally captured I was by your characters and your descriptions of Japanese life and the astounding research that went into bringing it all together into a wonderful story. "
- CvN, Toronto
"A quick note to say that at midnight last night I came to the end of The Ghost Brush. I re-read the final lines, then those at the beginning, not willing to let go of Oei quite yet. Still, what a perfect sense of completion...and continuation. It captures so well what the artist (perhaps every human) craves: to not simply state "I am", but to insist "I am here. And I will remain.""
- Ingrid Ruthig, Toronto
BOOK CLUB COMMENTS
"Among the most beautiful journeys I have ever been privileged to go on, travelling with a character...no, a person who now is so dear to me, another beloved -- like Paikea in "The Whale Rider"and Aminata in "The Book of Negroes" -- one with whom I have wept and fumed, prayed and resolved, sustained and evolved, and rejoiced."
- Richard Lemm, Charlottetown
Katherine was gracious, generous, and amazingly thought-provoking sharing her research and love of Oei. We thank her for bringing Oei into our consciousness. She is a feminist to the core against whom we could
still learn huge lessons about what it is like to have a passion for something we hold dear.
- Mary.
For me, the evening was absolutely fantastic. I’ve never before sat in an intimate conversation with an author. I still can’t comprehend how someone could write a book like this. The research, the imagination, the technical writing skills – way beyond me. I can see being a neurosurgeon much easier than being a fiction writer.
- Tini
What a rare pleasure- book group and author in one intimate circle. And what a warm, bright and accessible person Katherine is.
- Lois
When I read a book I love, I make notes in the back of passages that took my breath away. Here are mine for Ghost Brush:
292: From "I downed it.........I wished for my own life. That night I saw it winking, almost within reach."
319: "But I knew. That his bad works would be understood to have been from my brush, and my best would be assumed to be his."
322: The dying scene: "All night I watched him grow more beautiful....This is the tragedy of death. It was bringing the peace we had ruined with our restless lives."
- Joan