National Network for Equitable Library Service

From the author of the novels Love on the Killing Floor and Dragging the River, Trevor Clark’s new collection of stories covers broad territory, from an addict’s confessions to the corruption of academia, in such diverse locales as Jamaica and the UK.

Two voices, two families, two interweaving narratives with thirty years dividing them. In 1972 Birdie Cormack enters a highly controversial experiment in Toronto. Her story unfolds piece by fascinating piece, mostly by way of a compelling series of letters written to her parents. And in 2002 Jeremy Jacks returns to the West Coast after a failed bid to become a writer back east.

As bass player for the ’80s one hit wonder, Rock Viper, Edgar Martin toured the world, had sex with groupies and made thousands of people deaf. But the band broke up years ago and Edgar’s now middle-aged, out of work and desperate for cash. His luck seems about to change however when his old manager calls and offers him a hot new gig. There’s just one thing – the band plays children’s music while dressed as giant forest creatures. Edgar would be the bee. Edgar swallows his pride and takes the gig. After all, it’s just one show.

A naïve and unbalanced teenage girl with claims of extraterrestrial origins only wants two things in the whole world—family and fame—but she can’t help getting entangled in the lives of the eccentric and troubled humans she meets along the way: Alisen Eden, a pill-popping, unemployed waitress who finds the girl strangely familiar; Neil Manson, the neurotic psychology grad student Alisen is trying to seduce; a horror film director with delusions of grandeur; the charismatic and libidinous leader of a mysterious UFO-worshipping cult; and the stoic stranger known only as 19.

The short stories in God`s Autobio, Rolli’s debut collection, are impossible, quite probable, and everything in between. There’s a story about a man with a ridiculously huge coupon; about an elderly woman who befriends a frenzied robotic chimpanzee; an overzealous, if increasingly masochistic butler; plus twenty-three other surreal, sublime, and satirical creations by Canadian writer/poet/artist, Rolli, recipient of the John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award, and one of the winners of the 2008/2009 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.

Eve and Manny are engaged in post-civil war Israel, but Manny has a secret: he’s falling in love with his religious roots and turning his back on moral relativism. As their wedding date approaches, Manny deserts Eve, and in the midst of this betrayal Eve collides with a pre-soul, leaving her with a choice: reconcile with Manny or else condemn a soul to never living. More than a decade later, Eve has her own secret, one that may save her only son’s life or else tear her family apart.

When English Professor Marta Spëk is offered a film consultant’s contract, she’s fighting a bad case of year-end doldrums. She signs on, imagining that exotic hands-on work at the sandy location shoot for a made-in-Canada biopic will open doors of opportunity and spark her creativity – or at the very least supply interesting material for her family’s annual Labour Day gathering.

A penetrating and unflinching examination of the modern male, Monument is told through the eyes of Seth Wilhelm, a talented young hockey player whose career is cut short by injury, sending him spiralling out of control. A failed stint at college sets the stage for a second fall from grace, a car accident which claims the life of his new girlfriend, leaving Wilhelm himself to blame.

Though But When We Look Closer is a collection of eighteen stories that approaches its subjects from a parade of landscapes, running through these tales is a singular motif—taking control. Characters find themselves in skins they wish to shed, with vices held close and with voices that must be heard. Whether it be seeking a life in a foreign land, lusting after a street junky, driving through the city with a gun or searching for buried treasure, But When We Look Closer offers a fascinating examination into the occupations and obsessions of those who walk beside us and live next door.

This is the manuscript of Xavier Bernard, an average, mundane and altogether unexceptional author who has attempted to claw back his lackluster life story by writing it himself. Free to invent the facts and improve on truth, he will stop at nothing to get the ending he desires. But when his closest friend begins to separate truth from fiction, spotting mysterious gaps and overlaps in the storyline, it becomes a race against the clock to decipher just what sort of ending Xavier plans to write.