Suddenly Light

“These stories give literary realism a good name.”—Kirkus Reviews

Fifteen stories replete with an intimate, nuanced, and quietly profound realism by the Trillium Book Award–winning author of The Clarion

With crisp and penetrating prose, the stories in Suddenly Light are bracing, buoyant, and test the delicate threads that tie us together.

Nina Dunic is a two-time winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, has been longlisted by the CBC Short Story Prize four times, and was nominated for The Journey Prize. CBC Books named Dunic in its 2023 Writers to Watch list. Her debut novel The Clarion won the 2024 Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize, was selected as the Best Canadian Debut of 2023 by Apple Books, and was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2023. Nina lives in Scarborough, ON. Find out more at ninadunic.com.

Praise for Suddenly Light:

“Dunic’s characters are all different sorts, at all different stages of life, dealing with tragedies, indignities, and other wild cards that cause them to lose their footing. […] all the pieces are beautifully etched thanks to Dunic’s flair for the power-packed chiseled sentence. As the widow from whose perspective the story “Youth” is told thinks about the teenagers she has taken to observing, ‘There was something pure about them, like elements…hot and bright or dark and cold, sparking off each other, reac­tive and explosive.’ These stories give literary realism a good name.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Dunic introduces us to some truly remarkable characters in this thoughtful collection of short stories showing how awkward and tenuous real human connection can be. In Suddenly Light, we meet characters who feel like people we see every day who are placed in unexpected situations: overnight security guards at a shopping mall and the interloper they find, a high school student who discovers a familiar-looking n1an frozen in the park, a pair of roommates who enjoy spying on the frequently naked woman across the street, a pet groomer who haltingly befriends a neighbourhood character. Dunic’s stories are neatly constructed, subtle but capable of delivering an out-of-nowhere emotional punch that has the ring of truth. It’s a book full of pleasant surprises and uncomfortable revelations.”—Apple Books

Praise for The Clarion:

“A novel of small, graceful moments of epiphany, fleeting happenstance connections, like the plaintive sound of a trumpet in the dark. A wonderful, and promising, debut.”—Toronto Star

“An entrancing debut novel.”—The Globe and Mail

“Dunic’s gentle prose, attentiveness and keen attention to detail is evident throughout this quiet and melancholy narrative, both in its few-and-far-between moments of not-quite happiness and acceptance and in its much more frequent moments of longing and despair. It is easy to see why [her] writing has been so well received and so well judged across the country, and it is exciting to imagine who and what she will create in the years to come.”—Winnipeg Free Press

“With her beautiful debut novel, Nina Dunic takes a clear-eyed look at the ways we try to fool ourselves. Siblings Stasi and Peter shared a difficult and disjointed childhood, but they’ve taken divergent paths as adults. Stasi, a restless and driven wife, mother, and not-quite executive, strives to make the world bend to her will, while Peter, a would-be professional trumpet player, bends for everything and everyone all too easily. Alternating between her two protagonists’ points of view, Dunic gives us heartbreaking insight into the inner monologues that nag at both characters as they each try to skirt past the deeper issues that are too painful to acknowledge. Both tragic and relatable, The Clarion is an intimate portrait of two people who are keenly aware of their flaws, even if they don’t have the courage to confront them.”—Apple Books

”[The] spare prose in this book is the perfect example of why less is more. … it gives us a snapshot into two people’s lives, offered alongside descriptive writing that forces you to slow down and consider the words chosen and the meaning behind them.”—Anne Logan, I’ve Read This and CBC’s The Homestretch