Urban Disturbances

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The Porcupine's Quill, Jan 29, 2021 - Fiction - 200 pages

In Urban Disturbances ordinary characters reveal through their stories the infinite possibilities of our common humanity.

A dispassionate lawyer experiences mixed feelings about talking a man out of jumping off a bridge. A respected philanthropist begins to buckle under the weight of a shocking secret. A determined woman crafts a meticulous plan to bag a rich husband. Jack (of beanstalk fame) discovers the maiden in the tower—and happily ever after—aren’t always all that they’re cracked up to be. These characters and others are at once painfully ordinary and deliciously absurd, often relatable and occasionally irredeemable. They navigate complicated relationships and contend with their own self-destructive behaviours, all the while clinging to essential, very human, desires: to be noticed, to be wanted, to be loved, and occasionally, when the situation calls for it, to get what they deserve.

 

Contents

A Walk with God
11
One for the Money
45
Adventures in Eating
73
All in the Game
81
Birding with Dad
113
Secondhand
119
A Suburban Fairy Tale
149
The Price Is Right
159
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About the author (2021)

Bruce McDougall has been a freelance writer for more than 30 years. A graduate of Harvard College, he served as an editor of The Harvard Lampoon and attended the University of Toronto Law School before becoming a full-time writer. He has written or co-written more than twenty non-fiction books, including The Last Hockey Game (Goose Lane, 2014) and biographies of Canadian poet Charles Mair; Canada’s first detective, John Wilson Murray; and business giant Ted Rogers. He has also published a collection of short stories, Every Minute Is a Suicide (Porcupine’s Quill, 2014). His essays have appeared in The Antigonish Review and his fiction in Geist, subTerrain and Scrivener. He lives in Toronto.

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