Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is one of two story collections to be shortlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction. Hers is the sort of collection you’d expect to appear if you were to set a book of Etgar Keret stories on a shelf next to a book of…
All down the street we’d been fighting ’til we passed the drug store where Mandy saw the ads in the window and they reminded her that she was having a certain female problem with itchiness so she told me to wait outside with the dog while she ran inside to buy whatever it was she needed that was advertised on special in the window.
Now I know (and from personal experience) that the way a girl looks in a 320 by 240 pixel photo posted on a dating site and the way she looks in a coffee shop on Queen Street on a Thursday evening can be two completely different … uh … ways.
He shoved me into his change room and the plywood door swung shut like a coffin lid. I wriggled out of my jacket and trousers and imagined I was Harry Houdini locked in a cage suspended over a raging river.
It started with a three-day blackout. They got the grid online again, but never back to the way it was. From then on, there were rolling blackouts, at least a couple hours each day. There was talk of crumbling infrastructure, but that was only half the problem.
As I was stocking canned goods, Lenora brushed past me and whispered under her breath: Wonder where they got the new girl from. She nodded to the end of the aisle where I saw half a checkout counter and a pair of forearms drawing packages of pasta under the scanner.
There’s a war coming. That’s what Brian’s mom said when she gave us some of the cookies she’d baked. We’d been playing in the fort Brian made in his basement, shooting each other in the legs with our BB guns. While we ate our cookies, Brian’s mom told us about the Book of Revelation and how, inside that book, it said there’s a war coming.
Brian said it first. Nothing ever happened. That’s what he said. Brian was two years older than me, but not old enough to get a real summer job that paid money and stuff. Him and me, we hung out together all summer doing not much of anything …
I’ve never been called a pervert but once, and that once was yesterday when I went downstairs for a swim. The building’s got a nice pool that hardly anyone uses. Most afternoons I do a few lengths. It helps settle my mind and, theoretically, helps to keep the blubber from gathering around my middle.
He ran over the baby in his driveway. It was dark and he had been on his way to the grocery store for some potato chips. He liked having something to munch on while he watched movies late at night. The grocery store closed at eleven and he got into his car at ten forty-five. It was going to be tight, whether or not he made it in time to buy his potato chips.
May I pet your dog? she asked with the breathy voice of a power-walker who has just paused. The husband said yes. The woman knelt before the dog and cooed and petted it. She looked up at the husband and, rising, asked if she might kiss him.
When the man woke, he turned to see the woman mouthing words at him from across their pillows. He could see the lips moving, and the tongue pushing the words out between the teeth, but he heard nothing. Maybe he had gone deaf in his sleep. But he recalled the jarring buzz from his clock radio.
Not being a particularly religious man, I don’t know how one goes about nominating a person for a sainthood. So how does it work? Is it like the Oscars? Maybe that comparison is too crass. The Nobel Peace Prize, then? Are there nominations and then deliberations?
Harry presses his back to the post of the swing set and watches a light plane pass overhead. The plane trails a banner ad for something. Harry can’t say what. A chill wind makes his eyes tear and that blurs his vision. Maybe it’s an ad for cough syrup, or condoms. Most likely an ad for a wireless service provider.
When Vince woke up on Saturday morning, he didn’t think much of the fact that the space beside him in the bed was empty. With eyes still shut, he stretched out his left arm and found the pillow cold and the sheets thrown back. Emily was probably up and running errands or digging in the garden or chatting with the neighbours.