Tunes for Dancing Bears: Media
Writer’s Block | May 2025
Interview by All Lit Up
Writer Irena Karafilly is the latest to answer our Writer’s Block questionnaire: she tells us about the sad reality for many mothers that informs her new novel Tunes for Dancing Bears (Baraka Books), what she’d be doing if she wasn’t writing, and her advice for aspiring writers.
Read the full interview at All Lit Up…
From Foreword Magazine | May/June 2025
By Meg Nola
In Irena Karafilly’s haunting novel Tunes for Dancing Bears, a woman gives birth to a stillborn child and struggles with ‘the shock and grief that follows.
In September 1991, Lydia delivers a full-term baby in a Montreal hospital. Controlled chaos ensues as Lydia’s obstetrician tries to revive her stillborn son; the room becomes quiet, “like a deserted theatre following a bomb threat.” Lydia is sedated by nurses, who offer vague assurances that she’ll be able to have another child soon. Set within a compact time frame of eleven days, the book details Lydia’s overwhelming postpartum anguish. Her body is “swollen and slashed”; her breasts fill with milk, even without a baby to feed. She also feels aching emptiness when she hears the cries of other healthy newborns in the maternity ward.
Lydia’s husband, John, is a surgeon; though saddened by the death of his infant son, he cannot fathom Lydia’s primal feelings of loss. Approaching his fortieth birthday, John is caught up in midlife uncertainties and the guilty intrigue of an extramarital affair. Yet during Lydia’s hospital stay, he becomes conscious of her absence and his closeness to her. His relationship with his independent-minded mistress deteriorates into contempt.
John and Lydia also experience commonality and discord through their shared Greek heritage. While John’s prosperous family is better assimilated, Lydia was born in a Greek “seaside village” with “cobblestoned streets and olive orchards.” She immigrated to Canada as a girl and maintains a strong emotional connection to her heritage, even speaking Greek with poignant reflexivity after her baby’s death. Lydia’s deep, almost mystical cultural resonance is undermined by the snobbery of her mother-in-law.
The eloquent, impressionistic novel Tunes for Dancing Bears evokes the devastating void left by a stillborn child.
FROM THE MIRAMICHI READER
By Anne Smith-Nochasak
“Irena Karafilly examines the impact of stillbirth on a family, conveying its reality with accuracy and profound sensitivity… The story is told without sentiment and without judgment. There is simplicity of style and an observational quality to the entire work. As we read the shattering beginnings to the journey of Lydia and John, we wonder what the outcome might be in a year’s time, while drawing strength from the hints of beginning hope. A well-researched and compelling story.”
Read the full review at Miramichi Reader…
Conversation with CBC’s Sonali Karnick on ALL IN A WEEKEND
May 18, 2025, 8:10 a.m.
Click here to listen: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6764703