Description
Book Synopsis This is the story of 29-year-old Albie Starbach, a reclusive man, a caring man, but he is also a dangerous man… living in a world that to him is threatening because he feels he has been wronged, so he is resentful. And he has wired his rooming house with dynamite, and every time he goes out he sets a timer. He had better get back in time, without interference or difficulty, or the house will blow. His only companion is his legless mother who, in a wheelchair in their basement rooms, conducts day-long derisive arguments with the television, as if all those people were alive in her room. Living together at the bottom of their world, mother and son feed each other their rage, their righteous indignation, their sense of moral singularity. Determinedly alone, determinedly wounded, they are embattled, and their story is very much a story of our time, and the world had better watch out because this innocuous caretaker is prepared to take everyone with him.
Trade Review“The final words in
All the Lonely People, Barry Callaghan’s magisterial collected short fiction, are 'once upon a time.' This would at first appear an odd way to end a volume of close to 500 pages, one that comprises a career-spanning overview of the author’s work in this particular genre. But the invocation of an old-world fairy-tale formula tilts in the direction of memory and the past, which is appropriate for the current volume in general and the specific concerns contained in many individual stories.” —
Toronto Star “Callaghan writes with a powerful verve, a seeming abandon and heedlessness which upon closer examination reveals itself to be the result of careful, subtle, and unobtrusive skill and care… [He] doesn’t write about characters so much as inhabit them…” —Quill & Quire
"Callaghan is a writer whose style is laced with a biting, satirical outlook on contemporary urban life…by turns funny, morbid, and raunchy, Callaghan’s acid flowing prose pulls the reader along effortlessly.” —Saskatoon Star Phoenix
“Callaghan’s is an intensely visual and tactile style…” —Boston Globe
“His is one of the few story collections I’ve seen that even begins to pick up from the method of
Dubliners. Like Joyce, Callaghan gets so deeply and honestly into the local world that it is the international place we all inhabit.” —American critic, M.L. Rosenthal
