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Alumna's debut novel wins Leacock Medal for Humour
Western News, June 28, 2020
By Debora Van Brenk
Molly MacGregor works as a part-time shoe store clerk in the Largest Mall in the World while dreaming of writing a novel.
Her prosaic life selling ‘low- to mid-quality footwear’ is neither as eventful as that of Moll Flanders, after whom she is named, nor as romantic as that of her idol, Jane Austen.
Nonetheless, the mall has its own odd ecosystem – from the bench near the dolphin tank where she eats tuna sandwich lunches, to the Ottoman Empire shop (‘No Chairs! Only Ottomans!’), to the clothing store that attracts men with mullets and a penchant for shiny suits.
The fictional Molly is the protagonist in the debut ‘anti-romance’ novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass & Purveyor of Fine Footwear (published by NeWest Press) by Western alumna Heidi Jacobs, MLIS’06.
Jacobs has just been awarded this year’s Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, the book selected from among 84 nominees. (Runners-up were CROW by Amy Spurway and Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor.)
