Urban Disturbances

Review\n`Like gonzo lit meets Canadian civics.' -- Jonathan Kay, former editor of The Walrus\n`In his engrossing, cut-diamond collection of 18 finely observed short stories, Bruce McDougall captures with a tough-minded empathy the existential plights of the anonymous low and vainglorious high, the innocent and venal, the fragile and incorrigible, the petty and profound.
`Moving from realism to fable, from the luckless working stiff to self-deluding philanthropist, his characters randomly intersect and collide, only to fall back into their class bubbles, each and all "wearing their destinies like a layer of dust."\nHis lacerating satirical jabs are worthy of Jonathan Swift. Sudden, sharp turns of phrase catch you like a left hook, and we are left experiencing the ordinary surfaces of life as extraordinary-no ordinary achievement.' -- James FitzGerald, author of What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son's Quest to Redeem the Past, winner of the 2010 Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize\n`These stories, about small people coping in and beyond an irascible city, take shape like songs. As the melodies float up and hang in the rafters, their truths linger.' -- Don Rooke, musician and founder of The Henrys\nBruce McDougall's skilful short stories sketch a warts-and-all portrait of humanity, illuminating the mysterious forces that drive people to behave in unique-and uniquely human-ways.