Apastoral

Harold "Bones" Malone has become an unnatural thing. Convicted of murder, he is tried and sentenced to become Constock, a new penal system wherein the worst of society have their brains transplanted into farm animals - Pigs, goats, even llamas, and Bones' case, a Shetland Sheep. Not wanting to live out his days in petting zoos, or fleeing from other constock in rut, Bones decides to make a run for it, to return to the city and, somehow, somehow, clear his name. But the Constockade is vast, little sheep, and is patrolled by wolves with prison-guard brains.

A Miramichi Reader "Best Fiction" of 2022

Winner of the 2022 New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction

"This is a novel that's bleak and funny, down beat but bumptious. You can see Lee inverting mores, ideas, professions, moods, logic, and the bestial nature of the human animals in ways that says this is all madness!" Jeff Bursey, from the Introduction.

"A stream-of-consciousness excursion into the animal mind of human suffering that chills to the bone even as it tickles the rib. Its unique brand of brutality reads with the haunting familiarity of a recurring nightmare." Steven Mayoff, author of Fatted Calf Blues

"The book reads with the zest of a Marx brothers caper, with all the layers of humor, the periodic moments of seemingly simple genius, a wealth of detail, and plenty of narrative shifts." Rich Harsch, Publisher

Lee D. Thompson is a writer and editor in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Apastoral: A Mistopia is his third book and his first full-length novel. His short fiction has appeared widely in anthologies and journals since the late 90s.