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End Times: Stories
Finalist for the Quebec Writers' Federation Concordia University First Book Prize.
End Times is an astounding debut collection of stories about evangelical culture, ideological polarization, and the messiness and mysteries of humanity.
A Vancouver mother convinces her opioid-addicted son to attend church, and sparks her own personal emergency. A jet-setting consultant tries to help a rural fundamentalist teen, while her own secular life unravels in Toronto, Davos, and beyond. An atheist doctor attempts to expose a hipster megachurch pastor as a closeted hypocrite.
At a time when the end feels nigh for many, End Times brings together an expansive cast of the devout and the dissenting, the elderly and the young, immigrants, elites, the burned-out, and the lonely, exploring our hidden anxieties and longings.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2023
2 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Michelle Syba
1 book6 followersI was born in Toronto and grew up Pentecostal. In university, I left the faith and became a zealot for literature, completing a PhD in English at Harvard. My work has been published in The New Quarterly, Image, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. I live in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 23, 2023
I LOVED this book. It was moving, funny, surprising, and enlightening.
As a secular reader, this is the only book I have ever read that showed me “what it is like” to have faith, to experience God speaking directly to you, or to make day-to-day choices through the lens of eternal souls. I saw how this worldview can motivate generosity, patience, gratitude, humility, and courage, even as it can also justify arrogance, control, judgement, and abuse. I feel I have a wider understanding of the range of human experience for having read this book.
Growing up in a secular liberal Canadian family, most of my exposure to discussions about religion has been superficial and condescending, based on caricature and cliche, or dealing only with detached logical arguments. If there is any argument in Syba’s stories, it is only for deeper understanding, for situating questions of faith in the messy emotional terrain of our actual lives. There are no caricatures or cliches here. Her stories provide tender, surprising, and often funny explorations of the ways her characters’ beliefs and conflicts are bound up in their needs for certainty, control, love, meaning - whether they are Christian or atheist, evangelical or not (and to be clear, evangelism occurs among both the Christians and the atheists here).
But while I learned a lot, that doesn’t mean these stories are didactic in tone or intent. First and foremost, this is simply very good literary fiction. Faith is a central theme and source of conflict between Syba’s characters, but it never exists in isolation. The conflicts have just as much to do with romantic ambivalence, tensions between parents and children, loneliness, and the fallout of our failures to understand each other - or ourselves.
And while debates over religious faith don’t come up a lot in my day-to-day life, there are no shortage of political conflicts that I would rather be curious about than bitter about. Syba’s writing helps me to do just that. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
As a secular reader, this is the only book I have ever read that showed me “what it is like” to have faith, to experience God speaking directly to you, or to make day-to-day choices through the lens of eternal souls. I saw how this worldview can motivate generosity, patience, gratitude, humility, and courage, even as it can also justify arrogance, control, judgement, and abuse. I feel I have a wider understanding of the range of human experience for having read this book.
Growing up in a secular liberal Canadian family, most of my exposure to discussions about religion has been superficial and condescending, based on caricature and cliche, or dealing only with detached logical arguments. If there is any argument in Syba’s stories, it is only for deeper understanding, for situating questions of faith in the messy emotional terrain of our actual lives. There are no caricatures or cliches here. Her stories provide tender, surprising, and often funny explorations of the ways her characters’ beliefs and conflicts are bound up in their needs for certainty, control, love, meaning - whether they are Christian or atheist, evangelical or not (and to be clear, evangelism occurs among both the Christians and the atheists here).
But while I learned a lot, that doesn’t mean these stories are didactic in tone or intent. First and foremost, this is simply very good literary fiction. Faith is a central theme and source of conflict between Syba’s characters, but it never exists in isolation. The conflicts have just as much to do with romantic ambivalence, tensions between parents and children, loneliness, and the fallout of our failures to understand each other - or ourselves.
And while debates over religious faith don’t come up a lot in my day-to-day life, there are no shortage of political conflicts that I would rather be curious about than bitter about. Syba’s writing helps me to do just that. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
January 16, 2024
End Times is an impressive and emotionally charged collection of short stories, with an enchanting cast of characters that struggle with meaning, God, and feeling like the end may be near. Within we discover a divide between the believers and non-believers of an evangelical Jesus and truly thinking about the emptiness of life. The stories paint a real picture of the meaning of faith, how people come to it, and how hard it is to ever really get away from it, even if you want to. This collection allows you to glimpse into understanding how it feels to be a true believer and gain a greater understanding of how things happen, and how faith gets and keeps its grasp on those it has.
Seven stories make up End Times, and all offer some kind of view of what it is like to have faith or not to have faith, having lost it, or left it behind. The stories are sharp, beautifully written and demand to be read carefully. Syba is a sharp observer of modern life, and her observations are brilliant, sometimes even funny. “He liked his customized life, the bespoke sneaker and the grand cu coffee pods, the weekly meal kit with an elongated baggie holding a single green onion to garnish the evening’s updated bún bó hué, ready in under thirty minutes.”
In the first story, End Times, we see the divide between an immigrant mother and her now adult children, who have become non-believers and struggle with their own lives. Syba does an excellent job at pointing out how people come to religion, the loneliness and despair that might lead them there, to community, to acceptance. Many of her characters are immigrants to North America, leaving behind one way of life and searching for another. She points out with clear intention the differences between the one who immigrated here and the children that come after, the disconnect of one never really understanding the other. Another memorable story is Matsutake, where a couple who have lost a child, and a couple who could never have children meet in an RV park. One couple has faith, and one doesn’t. Who’s in the right? Does anyone have to be right? A recurrent theme in this collection comes from the idea of having children, not having children and the regrets and longings that emerge from that large decision or non-decision.
Syba challenges our own beliefs and shows us the ways that people find religion, the difficulties of modern society, and what connects and divides. She captures the unknowing and blind trust of faith when you need something to fill you. She touches on queerness, childlessness, how people become a certain way, and even the storming of Parliament Hill due to Covid restrictions. Her characters and observations are sharp and timely, leaving you with space to ruminate. We are left pondering what is community and how it works for us and in the absence of faith, can we find it? A stunning and moving collection.
Seven stories make up End Times, and all offer some kind of view of what it is like to have faith or not to have faith, having lost it, or left it behind. The stories are sharp, beautifully written and demand to be read carefully. Syba is a sharp observer of modern life, and her observations are brilliant, sometimes even funny. “He liked his customized life, the bespoke sneaker and the grand cu coffee pods, the weekly meal kit with an elongated baggie holding a single green onion to garnish the evening’s updated bún bó hué, ready in under thirty minutes.”
In the first story, End Times, we see the divide between an immigrant mother and her now adult children, who have become non-believers and struggle with their own lives. Syba does an excellent job at pointing out how people come to religion, the loneliness and despair that might lead them there, to community, to acceptance. Many of her characters are immigrants to North America, leaving behind one way of life and searching for another. She points out with clear intention the differences between the one who immigrated here and the children that come after, the disconnect of one never really understanding the other. Another memorable story is Matsutake, where a couple who have lost a child, and a couple who could never have children meet in an RV park. One couple has faith, and one doesn’t. Who’s in the right? Does anyone have to be right? A recurrent theme in this collection comes from the idea of having children, not having children and the regrets and longings that emerge from that large decision or non-decision.
Syba challenges our own beliefs and shows us the ways that people find religion, the difficulties of modern society, and what connects and divides. She captures the unknowing and blind trust of faith when you need something to fill you. She touches on queerness, childlessness, how people become a certain way, and even the storming of Parliament Hill due to Covid restrictions. Her characters and observations are sharp and timely, leaving you with space to ruminate. We are left pondering what is community and how it works for us and in the absence of faith, can we find it? A stunning and moving collection.
May 21, 2023
I loved this collection, and I hope it finds all of the readers it deserves! Absolutely riveting stories rooted in evangelical culture — from an RV-ing couple divulging secrets to strangers, to a doctor obsessed with a pastor’s sexuality. So much is uncovered about these gripping characters in each story — all of which seem to be exploring one central question: “Could someone live a lie and be happy?” Ugh. So good!
Syba’s writing is so clear of mind and incisive. Such a deep, thoughtful intelligence and curiosity displayed so humbly and beautifully in these stories. Best read in the quiet, if you can find some, so you don’t miss a thing. A favourite of 2023 for me.
Syba’s writing is so clear of mind and incisive. Such a deep, thoughtful intelligence and curiosity displayed so humbly and beautifully in these stories. Best read in the quiet, if you can find some, so you don’t miss a thing. A favourite of 2023 for me.
May 29, 2023
In these beautiful, bewildering short stories, Michelle Syba orients the reader in feeling lost, threads love through loneliness, and extends to her characters an extraordinary grace.
Though the pen feels secular, Syba’s meditations on faith are suffused with mystery. They carve out a space between certainty and humility, where orthodoxies secular and sacred are laid bare. And, when we least expect it, they burst into moments of revelation.
Syba is clearly a major talent - by the time I reached the final page I felt I'd glimpsed the heart of something.
Though the pen feels secular, Syba’s meditations on faith are suffused with mystery. They carve out a space between certainty and humility, where orthodoxies secular and sacred are laid bare. And, when we least expect it, they burst into moments of revelation.
Syba is clearly a major talent - by the time I reached the final page I felt I'd glimpsed the heart of something.
June 6, 2023
As an avid lifetime reader who normally enjoys historical fiction I was absolutely enthralled with this book after I began it. I read it in a few days and very quickly realized this author has the ability to write and pull you in to her topic. I felt the individual stories with such intensity, a true gift for a writer. Very thought provoking for me as someone brought up in a religious home, and viewed the more fundamentalist churches in my town with a curiosity. Religion and its many layers will forever be a conversation worth having. Thank you for this book Michele. Sincerely Crystal cook
July 18, 2023
One of the most engrossing books I've read in a good while. Each story slips us into the lives of characters who, whether they realize it or not, are headed toward "end times" of one kind or another—and in most instances, toward the beginning of a something new. With deft, subtle skill and deep humanism, Syba moves us through stories full of unexpected turns that reveal the basic human needs and conflicts we all share beneath the surface of our religious and/or secular beliefs.
June 19, 2023
Such a great collection! These stories are beautifully written and beautifully ambiguous. Michelle Syba subverted all my expectations about evangelical characters and communities; where I expected black and white, she works in shades of grey. I think my favourite was "Matsutake," a claustrophobic meditation on faith, marriage and mushrooms. 🍄
July 17, 2023
Thank you to the writer for this perfect little collection; each story feels crafted with care, tenderness, and yes, intelligent design. I re-read the novella (last story) immediately after finishing it, just to try to feel again the thrills I felt during the first read - at the observations, the word choices, the cadence. More stories please!
May 23, 2023
One of the most moving, beautifully written, and all-round satisfying short story collections I've read in a long time. There is a line in the story "A History of Prayer," that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Curious? Read the story. You can't miss it.
May 1, 2023
Syba masterfully uses the language of scripture and proverb to guide us into a space of beautiful, bewildering ambivalence. It is from this ambivalence that the reader is able to begin to sketch out their own positionality within the world of faith and doubt.
Highly recommend to anyone who's flirted or had an affair with faith.
Highly recommend to anyone who's flirted or had an affair with faith.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews