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Sightseeing
Sightseeing is the very best of almost award-winning author Andrew Smith's short fiction. All previously published in acclaimed literary journals, each story is a tour de force of narrative and characterization.
Featuring protagonists such as:
• a country policeman in an agonizing dilemma over a friend’s possible guilt
• a tourist's astonishing revelation about herself to a complete stranger
• a homemaker and her nostalgia for romance in a shadowy ballroom
• a sex worker’s disturbing self-discovery in the light of a client’s needs
• a war survivor's hallucinatory delirium concerning her past life
• a drag queen, having killed another, is bemused by a charge of manslaughter
and much more.
Each story is masterfully told, vividly peopled, and evocatively located.
Featuring protagonists such as:
• a country policeman in an agonizing dilemma over a friend’s possible guilt
• a tourist's astonishing revelation about herself to a complete stranger
• a homemaker and her nostalgia for romance in a shadowy ballroom
• a sex worker’s disturbing self-discovery in the light of a client’s needs
• a war survivor's hallucinatory delirium concerning her past life
• a drag queen, having killed another, is bemused by a charge of manslaughter
and much more.
Each story is masterfully told, vividly peopled, and evocatively located.
128 pages, Paperback
Published November 6, 2022
About the author
Andrew Smith
8 books33 followersAndrew Smith was born in Liverpool, England and now lives in Toronto and London. He has taken creative writing courses at the University of Toronto, and has also graduated as a graphic designer. His short fiction has appeared in some of the most repected literary magazines in North America. He has published two non-fiction books: Strangers in the Garden, an illustrated history of flowers and Highlights, an illustrated history of cannabis. He is also an award-winning travel writer. Edith’s War, his first novel, won a gold medal for fiction at the Independent Publisher's Awards in New York. His second novel, The Speech, was published by Urbane Publications in United Kingdom in October, 2016.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 14, 2022
In “Sightseeing,” Andrew Smith has collected nine of his short stories, stories originally published in some of Canada’s best literary magazines (Descant, Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review). Each is elegantly written, featuring a host of diverse characters who’ve been dealt interesting lives. By interesting, of course, I mean complicated and, often, compromised.
Take the opener, “Lost.” It is one of several stories that feature characters with dubious moral centres. Here a probable dastardly deed is willfully overlooked in favor of preserving old friendships.
Similarly, in the titular story two strangers, women brought together by a random tragedy, share unexpected intimacies. Each harbours a secret, but finds deceit is no barrier to friendship.
Memory plays a strong role in many of these stories. This comes in the form of nostalgia in “Last Quickstep, First Waltz.” A mother longingly remembers her dancehall days with her soon-to-be husband. These reflections are brought on by her daughter’s attending dance classes. In a formally bold move, the story’s point-of-view shifts between the two as they reflect on their budding romantic lives.
Memory takes on a bittersweet hue in “The Brothers Barnabotti.” Two brothers, once close but long drifted apart, meet for an impromptu Venetian holiday. As they tentatively renew their old intimacy, their cheerful banter belies their difficult shared past and their recent losses—the death of a husband, the divorce from a wife. As befits the setting, Smith’s descriptions here are beautifully eloquent.
Like “Last Quickstep, First Waltz, “Victory Dance” is formally inventive. It is built around the vivid recollections and hallucinations of a woman who has been viciously brutalized during a home robbery. Alternating with the woman’s present-moment struggle to call for help are memories of the robbery, her history with her husband, her experiences in wartime Liverpool—careful observations that are beautifully described.
As here, when the woman recalls touring the destruction of her war-torn neighbourhood:
She sees yawning gaps where faces of buildings have been blown away. Julia’s eyes can’t resist the zigzag imprint of a lost staircase that winds its way up sheer exposed walls, four storeys high. Each ghostly landing is defined by a different pattern of wallpaper. “Lovingly chosen,” thinks Julia.
Smith has lived in Toronto for decades, but originally hails from England and many of the stories are set there. With their diversity of characters and historical settings, rich complexity, language and, sometimes, humour, these nine stories are a treasure.
{ Cross-posted at my website. }
View all my reviews
Take the opener, “Lost.” It is one of several stories that feature characters with dubious moral centres. Here a probable dastardly deed is willfully overlooked in favor of preserving old friendships.
Similarly, in the titular story two strangers, women brought together by a random tragedy, share unexpected intimacies. Each harbours a secret, but finds deceit is no barrier to friendship.
Memory plays a strong role in many of these stories. This comes in the form of nostalgia in “Last Quickstep, First Waltz.” A mother longingly remembers her dancehall days with her soon-to-be husband. These reflections are brought on by her daughter’s attending dance classes. In a formally bold move, the story’s point-of-view shifts between the two as they reflect on their budding romantic lives.
Memory takes on a bittersweet hue in “The Brothers Barnabotti.” Two brothers, once close but long drifted apart, meet for an impromptu Venetian holiday. As they tentatively renew their old intimacy, their cheerful banter belies their difficult shared past and their recent losses—the death of a husband, the divorce from a wife. As befits the setting, Smith’s descriptions here are beautifully eloquent.
Like “Last Quickstep, First Waltz, “Victory Dance” is formally inventive. It is built around the vivid recollections and hallucinations of a woman who has been viciously brutalized during a home robbery. Alternating with the woman’s present-moment struggle to call for help are memories of the robbery, her history with her husband, her experiences in wartime Liverpool—careful observations that are beautifully described.
As here, when the woman recalls touring the destruction of her war-torn neighbourhood:
She sees yawning gaps where faces of buildings have been blown away. Julia’s eyes can’t resist the zigzag imprint of a lost staircase that winds its way up sheer exposed walls, four storeys high. Each ghostly landing is defined by a different pattern of wallpaper. “Lovingly chosen,” thinks Julia.
Smith has lived in Toronto for decades, but originally hails from England and many of the stories are set there. With their diversity of characters and historical settings, rich complexity, language and, sometimes, humour, these nine stories are a treasure.
{ Cross-posted at my website. }
View all my reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review