The Obvious Child

The exceptional debut story collection by the recipient of the 2006 Writer’s Trust/McClelland & Stewart $10,000 Journey Prize.

At once dark, comic, and fantastic, the tales of The Obvious Child reinvigorate some of literature’s most enduring conventions through prose that evokes Bernard Malamud, Paul Auster, Donald Barthelme, Kazuo Ishiguro & Franz Kafka.

From a detective seeking an impossible answer, a truck driver tormented by a glass jar, to a woman who mourns her thrice-dead husband, and a child adamant he was not born by his mother but a voice: Here are characters struggling to define themselves in a world where it is impossible to be fully human. Yet, these are characters who articulate the necessity of attempting humanity, who prove that there are narratives that bind us together.