Not for the faint of heart, the stories in this collection go to the heart of what matters as people relate to each other. There's humour, but it frequently has a darker, almost sinister, edge to it. There's a tired pessimism, but it's tempered with moments of grace and avenues of hope. There's a lot of sex, which delivers a few surprises, not all of them pleasurable.
A new father, shopping for groceries with his baby, worries that the child may not actually be his. An ultrasound technician, envious of her co-worker's sex life, has an unexpected second encounter with a creepy male patient. The wife of a hockey player is faced with his ambiguous sexuality. A woman and her family hold vigil at the bedside of her dying mother. A young woman waits her turn at an abortion clinic, harbouring the secret that the baby's father isn't the boyfriend sitting beside her.
These wonderfully-drawn characters sweep the reader along through their fraught and anxious, and occasionally funny lives. Sophisticated story telling makes the most complicated situations crystal clear and a pleasure to read. The
points of view are vivid and personal and as effective in the male characters as the female. The stories all work on various levels, and the endings are just right.
Join The Cult of Quick Repair and prepare to see another side of all-too-familiar contemporary life, in all its tense and throbbing glory.
