You Are Here

(Paperback)

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Description

This collection will appeal to readers looking for honest depictions of family, and a changing natural and political environmentsubjects which are particularly topical at this time.

Award winning author whose short stories appear frequently in such publications as Queens Quarterly and Fireweed.

Potential for interest from academic market as creative writing course textbook.

Booksellers familiar with Floods previous collections, including Red Girl Rat Boy and What Can You Do, will be anticipating this newest addition.

Reviews

PRAISE FORYOU ARE HERE

"These stories defy categorization; they are wonderful, layered, powerful, and imbued with clear senses of their often-Canadian settings and eras ... And they infuse bursts of joy into their cadences and descriptions of peoples literal and mental landscapes ... You Are Here is a rich and beautiful short story collection via which the voice of an era can be savored."
Foreword Reviews (starred)

"You Are Here presents insightful, often incisive, glances into fictional lives ... Cynthia Flood employs a realistic style to glances into characters who are products of their respective time and place, while at the same time surprising, sometimes jarring, us with unpredictability."
BC Review

PRAISE FOR CYNTHIA FLOOD

The prose of short story writer Cynthia Flood is sharp, minimalist and concise. Her 2013 collectionRed Girl Rat Boywas shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her latest book,What Can You Do, is a collection of 12 short stories that features flawed characters who are emotionally broken and adrift.
Ryan B. Patrick, CBC Books

"As the fifth collection of short stories from an award-winning author, its no surprise thatWhat Can You Dois an exceptionally written and thought-provoking read. The twelve stories make up just under 150 pages, and in each one Flood does a masterful job creating a sense of existence for her characters that extends beyond the pages of their story."
Joanna Graham,The Winnipeg Review

Cynthia Flood scatters fleeting moments of personal insight throughout the dozen intriguing stories ofWhat Can You Do, her fifth collection. Funnily, though, theyre sporadic, unreliable, and not what Floods characters (or readers) might expect. With characters muddling through or getting by with what life hands them, wisdom of the transcendent clarity variety turns out to be a rare commodity. In understated yet nuanced pieces that are bittersweet, sobering, or chuckle-inducing, the Vancouver-based author introduces a gallery of figures for whom paths fork unexpectedly, plans go awry, and expectations require extensive revising. Still, Floods characters are managing. And committed to their decisions, as on-the-fly as they might be.
Brett Josef Grubisic,Vancouver Sun

Her latest collection,What Can You Docements her reputation as a gifted and observant storyteller. Technically superb, demonstrating Floods unstinting grasp of complex, subterranean emotion, these twelve stories tread familiar territory. The haunting Struggle, about a disturbed womans memories of her activist past, mines the rivalries and chauvinism of far-left politics in 1970s Vancouver.
Trevor Corkum,Toronto Star

With rapid-fire narration, power-point prose, and darts of minimalist description, Flood nails her subject. Her characters are impatient to be heard, grabbing your attention, word bullets flying, hope and despair spilling over the pages.
M.A.C. Farrent,The Vancouver Sun

Author Bio

Cynthia Floods stories have won numerous awards, including The Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award, and have been widely anthologized. Her novel Making A Stone Of The Heart was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Prize in 2002. She is the author of the acclaimed short story collections The Animals in Their Elements (1987), My Father Took A Cake To France (1992), and Red Girl Rat Boy (2013) which was shortlisted for the BC Book Prizes fiction award and long-listed for the Frank OConnor award. She lives in Vancouvers West End.