AND THEN AGAIN BEGIN

Millington and Jay, two very discreet, middle-aged men living in Montreal, are in the fourth year of a marriage that seems idyllic to their friends. But the marriage is hidden from their parents, who live in St Vincent, and it is fraught with Millington’s problems from untreated trauma and his former career as a Methodist minister. And Then Again Begin (volume 4 of The No Safeguards Quartet) reveals their surprising discoveries as they attempt to resolve these problems.

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H. Nigel Thomas is a master of dialogue. In this telescoped and diaristic story memory, history, sexuality, religion, masculinity, metropolitan life, and post-colonial life–all collide. The lives lived in these pages are riven by persistent contradictions, pleasures and disappointments. Thomas is at his best as his characters reveal in their own words the many difficult and endearing truths of this powerful tale of familial revelations. This is a story told with bold intimacy from the powerful pen of a writer at the height of his powers.

—Rinaldo Walcott, author of On Property

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H. Nigel Thomas immigrated to Canada from St Vincent and the Grenadines in 1968. He is the author of dozens of essays, seven novels, three collections of short fiction, two collections of poems, and two academic books. His novels Spirits in the Dark (1993) and No Safeguards (2015) were shortlisted for the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award. The French translation of Lives: Whole and Otherwise—Des vies cassées—was a finalist for the Carbet des lycéens Award. He is the founder and English-language coordinator of Lectures Logos Readings and is the recipient of many awards; the most recent are Laureate Black History Month (2024), the Canada Council John Molson Prize for the Arts (2022), The Quebec Writers’ Federation Judy Mappin Community Award (2021), and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Achievement Award (2020).

2025 | Categories: 2. Books, Uncategorized | Tags: books, fiction | Leave a comment