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Finding humour in desolation and beauty in the absurd, this darkly comic story collection chronicles our struggle for control in an uncontrollable world.
An eruption of violence at a book reading. A doomed infatuation at the dawn of a plague. A married couple finding their carefully balanced lives as lighthouse keepers upended when they rescue a young woman from drowning. An oil executive spiralling into self-doubt as he is slowly swallowed by a snake.
Set in prepper cabins and dentist offices, ivory towers and backwoods cults, these and other stories tell of a Canadian west made new and strange. Equipped with a gallows humour and a keen sense of the loneliness, irrationality, and unexpected cruelties of modern life, Just a Howl explores the many ways the twenty-first century corrodes our every attempt to connect to one another, as all the while a backdrop of catastrophe — personal, societal, and ecological — tilts the comic into the tragic.
An eruption of violence at a book reading. A doomed infatuation at the dawn of a plague. A married couple finding their carefully balanced lives as lighthouse keepers upended when they rescue a young woman from drowning. An oil executive spiralling into self-doubt as he is slowly swallowed by a snake.
Set in prepper cabins and dentist offices, ivory towers and backwoods cults, these and other stories tell of a Canadian west made new and strange. Equipped with a gallows humour and a keen sense of the loneliness, irrationality, and unexpected cruelties of modern life, Just a Howl explores the many ways the twenty-first century corrodes our every attempt to connect to one another, as all the while a backdrop of catastrophe — personal, societal, and ecological — tilts the comic into the tragic.
Price: $19.99
Pages: 200
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Imprint: Rare Machines
Publication Date:
April 20, 2027
Trim Size: 7.00 X 5.00 in
ISBN: 9781459757547
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
FICTION / Short Stories (single author), Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Places / Canada, FICTION / Humorous / Dark Humor, FICTION / World Literature / Canada / 21st Century, Short stories
The stories in Just a Howl weave together like naked wires conducting shocks of betrayal, loss, mulish craving, dumb love. Will Richter's narratives are mordant and mischievous, fables for an age in need of fables, deeply humane and thrillingly combustive. Be ready for sparks.
Just a Howl is peopled with vividly drawn dreamers, doers, losers, lovers, and posers who seek meaning and connection in an era that offers little. The collection is indeed a howl — of pain, loss, hilarity, injustice, and bewilderment. Will Richter's candour and empathy know no bounds, and his kinetic prose took my breath away. A startlingly original collection from an exceptional new writer.
Will Richter's thirteen morbidly funny stories fuse into a single remarkable unit: with pace, high energy, twenty-first century regret, and compassion.
Just a Howl is peopled with vividly drawn dreamers, doers, losers, lovers, and posers who seek meaning and connection in an era that offers little. The collection is indeed a howl — of pain, loss, hilarity, injustice, and bewilderment. Will Richter's candour and empathy know no bounds, and his kinetic prose took my breath away. A startlingly original collection from an exceptional new writer.
Will Richter's thirteen morbidly funny stories fuse into a single remarkable unit: with pace, high energy, twenty-first century regret, and compassion.
Will Richter's writing has received the CBC Short Story Prize, was shortlisted for a Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and has appeared in journals such as the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Fiddlehead, subTerrain, The Threepenny Review, and Witness. Just a Howl is his debut story collection. Raised off the coast of British Columbia, Will now lives with his family in Vancouver.