The fascinating characters in this short story collection come from differing backgrounds and generations, but all sense disorder lurking beneath the fragile surface of existence. These finely crafted, witty, and engaging stories were short-listed for the 1999 Governor-General's Fiction Award in Canada.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The earthy, emotional characters of Fleming's first collection can, in moments of poetic sobriety, call a sheep a sheep (or a suicide a suicide, a betrayal a betrayal, a cancer a cancer as the case happens to be). "Atmospherics" brings a group of lesbian friends together for Christmas in a farmhouse banked by Canadian snow. Susan, pregnant by artificial insemination, finds that her dislike for punky Marla (her ex's new girl) wanes when Marla callously announces she's slept with a man and now is pregnant, too. The title story places Julie and her husband on the deck of their apartment building in a heat wave, on the evening of the death of Julie's twin. Julie remembers the impulse to transgress--and another heat wave--that urged their teenage gang to make free use of their richer neighbors' pools. A 17-year-old whose thin and greasy hair and puffed-up face make him look decades older than he is discovers his inner Don Juan in "Solar Plexus," in which Craig's calculated moves toward intimacy with a girl whose father is dying of cancer are beginning to have the intended effect when he pushes her too far. Canadian herself, Fleming sets most of her stories in Vancouver, Toronto and the country at large. At once ruthlessly precise with her descriptions ("Winters now were petulant and bitter, like the brothers of kings") and generous to her characters, she makes a bracing, truthful debut with these 13 stories.
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
I am, like David Copperfield and most other people real and imagined, born. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Aunt Ginnie, Odd Spot, Committee Boat, New York, Tawny Owl, Baby Bob, Nelson Smith, Brown Owl, Peter Pan, Ski Day, The Defining Moments of My Life, The Horseshoe, Timmy Mills New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
I am, like David Copperfield and most other people real and imagined, born. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Aunt Ginnie, Odd Spot, Committee Boat, New York, Tawny Owl, Baby Bob, Nelson Smith, Brown Owl, Peter Pan, Ski Day, The Defining Moments of My Life, The Horseshoe, Timmy Mills New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 6
books:
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- Vital Signs 2003-2004: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future by Worldwatch Institute in Back Matter
- West by Northwest: British Columbia Short Stories by David Stouck in Back Matter
- Inward to the Bones by Kate Braid in Back Matter
- Blue Light in Dash by Brenda Brooks in Back Matter
- Love Medicine and One Song by Gregory Scofield in Back Matter
See all 6 books this book cites
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