Off Book

by Mark Sampson

It’s the 1990s and all Cameron Hardy wants is to be a playwright. He arrives in Halifax as a student with big dreams and a bigger ego, but his first production goes disastrously awry. Humiliated, he changes gears after discovering he possesses a talent for the language driving the latest hot technology—the World Wide Web. Soon he is slogging away as a high-paid code monkey in the dot-com boom and longing for the literary life he has left behind. He finds solace with his equally misanthropic coworker Pauline, who is trapped in a numbing job and a loveless marriage. Only through their dialogues on life, desire and the pursuit of passion can they get back onto the scripts that reveal their truer selves.

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Mark Sampson is a fiction writer, poet, book reviewer, and literary critic, originally from Prince Edward Island and now living and writing in Toronto. He is the author of eight books: the novels Lowfield (Now or Never Publishing, 2025), All the Animals on Earth (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020), The Slip (Dundurn, 2017), Sad Peninsula (Dundurn, 2014) and Off Book (Norwood Publishing, 2007); the short story collection The Secrets Men Keep (Now or Never Publishing, 2015); the poetry collection Weathervane (Palimpsest Press, 2016); and the poetry chapbook Big Wilson (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023).

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, really.