Genni Gunn

"Writing on many levels at once is a skill that Gunn draws on with great success . . . Gunn develops a lively cast of characters – a collection of idiosyncrasies rife with strengths, weaknesses, fault lines and hidden passages – to create multi-dimensional, heartbreakingly human people. . . the way Gunn enfolds you into the mindset of her main characters is particularly moving, and her sensitive rendering of love and loss is remarkably astute.”  -subTerrain, Fall/Winter 2002

 “In her latest novel, Tracing Iris . . . Gunn confirms her special skill for weaving complex narrative patterns.”  - Books in Canada, September 2002

 “Gunn is a skilled layerer of foundations . . . If one of the chief jobs of a novelist is to raise as many questions as she answers (and stimulate further reading), Gunn definitely achieves this . . . Tracing Iris digs deep.  There’s little comic relief in this harrowing novel by a gifted West Coast writer.”   - The Globe & Mail, November 2001

“Gunn is. . . interested in probing Kate’s emotional wilderness...and deftly selects words for their sound as much as for their meaning. She introduces sections with italicized poetic meditations, soothing and jarring the reader by turns, a device that aptly reflects Kate’s tormented inner world." - Quill & Quire, October 2001

"Gunn, an accomplished jazz singer as well as a writer, tells this story of relationships and sleuthing..." - The Vancouver Sun, December 2001

"In her writing, Genni Gunn goes in search of the mother within her, the mother of all literary dreams, the mother that we all want to be and are not. The grace and perseverance with which she follows this missing mother are at the origin of her elegant, impulsive and disciplined writing." -- Dacia Maraini in Studi Canadesi