Search results for ""Author Richard` Cumyn""

In nine memorable new stories and with tragicomic flair, acclaimed master of the short form Richard Cumyn dramatizes lives in tumult and transition. If the sign for migrant soul is an enigma, this remarkably upbeat and innovative collection is anything but.

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A calculus formula, a calculating boy, a young woman who is intelligent but unwise -- the ingredients for a gripping story and the thematic fulcrum for this riveting collection of stories by Halifax writer Richard Cumyn. In this idiosyncratic collection of stories, Cumyn explores the surface tension between men and women and those rare moments of insight that often accompany loss. Casting his imagination over the territory extending from adolescence to middle-age, Cumyn finds plenty to contemplate and lots to laugh about as the men and women of his stories brushup against each other, sometimes violently, and often humorously.

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Famous Last Meals is a trio of contemporary novellas about the roles we play in an age when everyone is an actor. The curtain opens on "Candidates," a gentle satire starring a recent university grad who knows and cares little about politics but who finds himself working as a summer intern on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. "Famous Last Meals" examines two couples and their complex relationship as they re-enact the final repasts of famous people who died before the age of 30. "The Woman in the Vineyard" completes the triptych with a compulsive story about literary jealousy and the danger of becoming lost in the labyrinth of another writer's sources.

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The young occupy a territory of their own, a foreign land inaccessible to nostalgia and regret. In these eloquent, arresting stories, an assortment of exotic youth send tremors through the foundations of the established world: four summer students interrupt a once-famous artist's retreat from society; a naive job seeker shakes a frustrated employee out of middle-aged complacency; and a high school student's safety is threatened by her teacher's passion for the Riel Rebellion. Unsentimental, often funny, rarely nostalgic, each story of The Young in Their Country is a complete world.

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