Quietly, Loving Everyone

by Curtis McRae

A striking debut collection by one of Montreal’s brightest young writers.

Quietly, Loving Everyone, Curtis McRae’s debut collection of stories, assembles a meditative and often profound cycle of portraits pulled from everyday Canadian life. A young boy raises James Dean from the dead, only to find out the cult icon is not the playmate he’d hoped for. A university student riddled with ulcers silently spirals after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. A young girl takes a road trip with her older sister to Cape Cod, and years later reconstructs the tragic circumstances behind what she remembers. A couple goes on a date at an old porn theatre that is the last remaining vestige of a neighbourhood that has moved on. McRae plays witness characters at those crucial beginnings or ends of relationships, with lovers, friends, family, and most importantly themselves.

Curtis John McRae is editor-in-chief at Yolk Literary Journal. His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Chronicling the Days anthology (Guernica Editions, 2021), and others. Quietly, Loving Everyone is his debut short story collection. He lives in Montreal.

200 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2025

Reviews

[jjreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rare short story collection where I loved every single short story. I think I will be picking this up and coming back to them for a long, long time.

[Enn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each story felt as if it was so embedded and real. Curtis McRae is the patron saint of Montreal in winter.

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly special collection of short stories. While each story holds its own, the characters throughout are interconnected and complimentary. The overall effect is that you leave feeling like you read a novella, a well-paced sequence of stops and starts that became more than the sum of its parts.

Throughout each story, McCrae weaves in a delightful voyeuristic quality that offers a compassionate and light touch. In this collection we get small glimpses into the character's lives at a pivotal moment of connection, reflection or change. Some moments feel monumental and tragic, others mundane and gentle, but all offer their unique rhythm to create a satisfactory and bite-sized book that one can peruse many times over.

[Ben Brunen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quietly, Loving Everyone marks Curtis McRae as a breakout Montreal author with a rare gift for illuminating the quiet power of ordinary lives. Each story in this beautiful debut weaves together generational threads of family tragedy, blossoming love, and the impactfulness of the mundane. An excellent book. I can’t wait to read more from this author!

[Savannah Fiset · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important read. Rawness and tenderness woven together in between each page. The characters and stories are striking. Each story left me having to sit with the feeling—there’s something so incredibly poignant, beautiful, and to put it simply, real, in this book.

[Eric Hatch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is gonna be awesome.