The exceptional debut story collection by the recipient of the 2006 Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart $10,000 Journey Prize.
A detective seeking an impossible answer, a truck driver tormented by a glass jar, a disabled boy confused by his sexual awakening, an insurance adjustor who has worn the same suit for twenty years, and a woman mourning her thrice-dead husband are only a few of the characters struggling to define themselves in The Obvious Child, where it is impossible to become fully human. These are stories of families made strange, where absurdity looms over history and a sense of place.
These are ten poignant stories that create an enticingly dark, comic, and fantastic world suggestive of Kafka, Barthelme and Auster. Here are characters who ask the "big questions" of life as the author reinvents the folk tale, the family romance, and the hard-boiled detective narrative.
"Matt Shaw has candour and courage to burn. What he does...is as fascinating as it is impossible to describe" — Jim Bartley, first-fiction reviewer, Globe and Mail
"Matt Shaw’s thoughtful stories will make the meanest reader sing; he is a fine young writer sure to make a name for himself with this solid and well-crafted first book." –Leon Rooke

THE OBVIOUS CHILD - Matt Shaw
Fiction/Stories • 5x8 • 158 pages
978-1-55096-082-2
(hc) $22.95

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