An entertaining and insightful collection of stories by award-winning author Russell Wangersky about passive aggression in our everyday lives: tales of ordinary people who are quietly, desperately, and indirectly trying to impose their will on the uncaring world around them.

From critically acclaimed and award-winning writer, Russell Wangersky, comes a new collection of short fiction.Everyone has something they're good at: one particular personal skill that they use to keep their lives moving forward when their worlds suddenly become difficult or near-impossible. For some, it's denial; for others, blunt pragmatism. Still others depend on an over-inflated view of self to keep criticism and doubt at bay.In his new short story collection, Whirl Away, Russell Wangersky—author of critically-acclaimed fiction and non-fiction including The Glass Harmonica, Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself and The Hour of Bad Decisions— looks at what happens when people's personal coping skills go awry. These are people who discover their anchor-chain has broken: characters safe in the world of self-deception or even selfdelusion, forced to face the fact that their main line of defense has become their greatest weakness.From...

This first short fiction collection by a prominent Canadian journalist paints vivid word pictures of the world and these canvasses superimposes people in all their human imperfections. Russell Wangersky's characters, caught in a variety of human circumstances, make some outstandingly bad decisions. A labourer enjoys new-found popularity among his co-workers after losing several fingers in a work accident. So, in the face of returning invisibility, he makes a desperate decision. An elderly shut-in chooses to believe the lies of her own life and the world view she absorbs from talk radio and finds the scapegoats that both those distortions of reality require. A man on an ill-conceived vacation decides to stay in a hot tub all day and all night, rather than face his disintegrating family. In these stories, some people seem to escape the consequences of their bad decisions, some people wind up being redeemed, and some are left to fates the reader can only imagine. As a backdrop, often a counterpoint, to these very human struggles, Wangersky paints the most exquisite canvasses with his words. Whether it be landscape or seascape of his long-time home in Newfoundland, startling weather, fine woodworking, or the workings of a factory, he presents us with note-perfect descriptions of the often-stunning world in which we imperfect humans live. Wangersky reminds us, even bad decisions can be cause for celebration, of what it means to be human.From BooklistThe images in this debut collection of short stories are such that one can only wonder at the creative imagination of the writer, marveling at his ability to find the perfect metaphor to describe an atmosphere, a setting, or a character. The stories are about individuals, many separated, several unhappy, perhaps living marginal lives. How does a writer dwell on the loneliness, the separateness of people, without pushing the reader away in despair? Through his art, and Wangersky succeeds in doing exactly that. These stories provide glimpses into the psyches of people whose lives have turned in unexpected directions. Reading this collection means gaining insight into personalities; it means seeing new geographies, primarily in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. It means being bathed in adept images, at times beautiful, at times horrifying, but ultimately satisfying. A particularly memorable story is "No Apologies for Weather," in which the occasional rages of a beloved wife are seen as violent northeasters, which one eventually learns how to weather. The stories do not often have a resolution, but then, oftentimes, neither do lives. Maureen O'ConnorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedFrom the PublisherRussell Wangursky’s characters, caught in a variety of human circumstances, make some outstandingly bad decisions. A labourer enjoys new-found popularity among his co-workers after losing several fingers in a work accident. So, in the face of returning invisibility, he makes a desperate decision. An elderly shut-in chooses to believe the lies of her own life and the world view she absorbs from talk radio. And finds the scapegoats that both those distortions of reality require. A man on an ill-conceived vacation decides to stay in a hot tub all day and all night, rather than face his disintegrating family. In these stories, some people seem to escape the consequences of their bad decisions, some people wind up being redeemed, and some are left to fates the reader can only imagine. As a backdrop, often a counterpoint, to these very human struggles, Wangursky paints the most exquisite canvasses with his words. Whether it be landscape or seascape of his native Newfoundland, startling weather, fine woodworking, or the workings of a factory, he presents us with note-perfect descriptions of the often-stunning world in which we imperfect humans live. That we are capable of doing more than acting instinctually, of making decisions, marks us as human among the living creatures of this world. Thus, Wangursky reminds us, even bad decisions can be cause for celebration, of what it means to be human.

Thousands of boys dream of becoming firefighters. Some get the chance, and for some of those, the dream becomes a nightmare."Burning Down the House" is the story of Wangersky's eight-year career as a volunteer firefighter, an experience that wound up reaching into every facet of his life and changed the way he saw the world forever. Written in vibrant, luminous prose, the book traces his years from rookie to veteran firefighter and the toll it took on his personal life. Offering a rare glimpse into physical dangers and psychological costs of trying to save strangers' lives, Wangersky paints a harrowing and sometimes heartbreakingly vivid portrait of the fires, medical calls, and automobile accidents that are the standard fare of the profession.Visceral and affecting, "Burning Down the House" is an insightful insider's account of the perilous world of firefighting and an unforgettable memoir of how, in finding his passion, Wangersky lost himself.

A new short story from 2012 Scotiabank-Giller Prize finalist Russell Wangersky.In his first published short story since his critically acclaimed collection, Whirl Away, Russell Wangersky returns with a story about a lonely, ill old man, who is living alone in his house. Sick in bed for three days, Arthur Simmons ponders life, living and the sometimes difficult relationships he has with family members. The last of his generation, Simmons is both stubborn and desperate — a quietly explosive mix.Russell Wangersky is critically acclaimed writer whose most recent short story collection, Whirl Away, was a finalist for the Scotiabank-Giller Prize. He has also won the British Columbia National Award for Non-Fiction (Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself)), the BMO Winterset Award (The Glass Harmonica) and has been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (The Hour of Bad Decisions). He is a newspaper editor and...

From critically acclaimed author Russell Wangersky, comes a dark, psychological thriller about a man named Walt, a grocery store cleaner who collects the shopping lists people leave in the store and discard without thought. In his fifties, abandoned, he says, by his now-missing wife Mary, Walt is pursued by police detectives unsatisfied with the answers he's given about her disappearance.

Winner of the 2010 BMO Winterset Award When retiree Keith O'Reilly witnesses the murder of his neighbour by a pizza delivery man one night during a snowstorm, a unique series of stories begins to unfold. As the narrative seamlessly moves from neighbour to neighbour, house to house, the reader begins to understand, not only the circumstances that led to the murder, but the private secrets and personal struggles of many of the McKay Street residents. Travelling through the changing viewpoints of a more than a dozen of people in a small residential neighbourhood in St. John's, Newfoundland, The Glass Harmonica looks at the way common memories and shared experiences bend and warp as individuals recall the events of their lives, and how these distortions influence both the character's and the reader's understanding of the truth.