Life in the Deep End…
“John Gardiner’s stories are spoken songs that not just touch but wrench the heart. He shows us just how fragile our relationships and lives are and how easily our paths can be changed forever.”
- Michele Law, Producer, Kingsville Folk Music Festival
“John Gardiner is a master writer. He paints pictures with words. He understands human relationships, and gets to the heart of the matter.”
- Gurf Morlix, Musician, performer
“John Gardiner’s prose is concise and to the point. Redundancies, run-on sentences and embellishments that would bog narratives down have been assiduously avoided. That spareness creates a directness that stimulates listeners to explore the layers surrounding the text… His subjects resonate with the lives of anyone who’s ever been caught in a snow storm, enjoyed a hockey game, revelled in the pleasure of sitting down with a good book or simply thought about what transpired over a single day. Respect for the mastery authors such as Hemingway, Wolfe, Steinbeck and other literary giants had for presenting thoughts with impeccable clarity has an obvious influence over his style and it’s a facet that’s entirely welcome.”
- Brian Hay, Freelance Journalist, Sarnia, Ontario
“John Gardiner’s style is reminiscent of Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence and Stephen Leacock among others... He takes the little things in life, that many overlook, and raises them up to a moment of exquisite beauty or pain. His prose is, at times laugh-out-loud funny and, at other times, deeply moving.”
- Collett Tracey, English Professor, Carleton University