Böcker av Richard Cumyn

Lauder Jones and Mountcastle, two Halifax families both alike in dignity, linked by love and circumstance. Douglas Lauder Jones, obscure story writer, calls it "Life and No Escape." His lovelorn son John thinks it's the end of happiness. Neuroscientist Ursula Lauder Jones sees it as sink-or-swim parenting. Whatever it is, her daughter Merin, new owner of a movie house on Barrington Street, wants to sit through it twice. Her sister Anya, summer student working at Mountcastle Framing on Spring Garden Road, relishes life's richly varied fabric. And the youngest, Cary, budding writer, recognizes it as apt material for the many stories stitching this novel's intriguing brocade.

Famous Last Meals is a trio of contemporary novellas about the roles we play in an age when everyone is an actor. The curtain opens on "Candidates," a gentle satire starring a recent university grad who knows and cares little about politics but who finds himself working as a summer intern on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. "Famous Last Meals" examines two couples and their complex relationship as they re-enact the final repasts of famous people who died before the age of 30. "The Woman in the Vineyard" completes the triptych with a compulsive story about literary jealousy and the danger of becoming lost in the labyrinth of another writer's sources.

A calculus formula, a calculating boy, a girl who is intelligent but unwise -- these are the ingredients of the gripping story at the heart of Richard Cumyn's new collection. Human relations motivate "The Limit of Delta Y Over Delta X," especially the surface tension between men and women.But even looking at the darker side of humanity, Richard Cumyn finds plenty to laugh about. "The Sound He Made" dares readers to snicker at Bam's bold violence, and "Shel Do the Right Thang" is a funny fantasia on love and marriage.