Wow!! WOnderful short stories.
An author to watch I think! ( )

nyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I am rarely overly impressed by a collection of short stories. While I may enjoy individual short stories it’s very rare that I like a collection of them. So guess what? I *liked* Bang Crunch. Seriously. I did. Maybe it was the fact that a lot of the stories were set in Montreal and I was in Montreal at the time. Maybe it that I was just really open to things at the time (hey, I did decide to move back to Montreal at the same time…). Whatever it was, I’ll go with it. I would really like to give you more details about the stories and which ones I liked but um…I waited a really long time to write about this and now the books is packed. lol I do remember that I pretty much liked *all* the stories which is nothing short of shocking.

Read the rest here. ( )

This is a collection of 9 short stories, which by the way is Neil Smith's debut novel. He is a Canadian author living in Montreal, QC. The characters in all the short stories are all average people who end up in unexpected situations. The stories all vary in plot but the settings are all the same. The stories are all based around Montreal locations. (Its always nice to read books that take place in your city.)

The first story called Isolettes opens like this "Blue tube, green tube, clear tube, fat tube" The story is about An who has just had a premature baby with her gay friend Jacob. The details of the premature baby are so exact that you feel as though you are in the Nick U with the baby.

The story of Green Florescent protein is about a 17 year old boy, Max who is struggling to admit his attraction to his friend. There is also another story about Max's mother Funny Weird or Funny Ha Ha. Where she talks about growing up watching reruns of I Love Lucy. She talks about her husband and how he died. She put his ashes in a curling stone.

The B9ers is about the struggle of a group of people trying to return to normal life after finding out they all have benign tumors. They don’t get the support they need since their tumors aren't malignant.

The Bang Crunch is about Eepie a girl with Fred Hoyle’s Syndrome, which ages her a year a day until she reaches 80 and then she goes back in time.

Those are just a few examples of the stories that are in the book. I really enjoyed reading them. Its been awhile since I have read short stories. Looking forward to reading some more.

http://www.iwilldare.com/2008/02/18/bang-crunch/ ( )

Smith clearly loves the world in all its messy, car accident glory.

(Read more at Fourth-Rate Reader.) ( )