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Fiction Short Stories (single Author)

The Middle Stories

by (author) Sheila Heti

Publisher
House of Anansi Press Inc
Initial publish date
Aug 2012
Category
Short Stories (single author), Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781770893214
    Publish Date
    Aug 2012
    List Price
    $14.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781770890886
    Publish Date
    Apr 2001
    List Price
    $14.95

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Description

Balancing wisdom and innocence, joy and foreboding, Sheila Heti’s completely original stories lead you to surprising places. This edition featuring nine new stories.

A frog doles out sage advice to a plumber infatuated with a princess, a boy falls hopelessly in love with a monkey, and a man with a hat keeps apocalyptic thoughts at bay by resolving to follow a plan that he admits he won’t stick to.

Globe and Mail critic Russell Smith has described Heti’s stories as cryptic fairy tales without morals at the end, but really the morals are in the quality of the telling and in the details disclosed along the way. Look where you weren’t going to look, think what you wouldn't have thought, Heti seems to say, and meaning itself gains more meaning, more dimensions. Heti’s stories are not what you expect, but why did you expect that anyway?

This special new edition features nine new stories that were not available in the first Canadian edition.

About the author

Sheila Heti is the acclaimed author of the novel How Should a Person Be?, the story collection The Middle Stories, which was published in Germany, France, The Netherlands, the United States, and Spain, and the novel Ticknor, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Her writing has appeared in various literary anthologies and in several US and Canadian publications, including New York Times Magazine, Esquire, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and Brick. Heti is also the creator of the popular Toronto and New York-based lecture series, Trampoline Hall. She studied playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montreal, and philosophy and art history at the University of Toronto. Sheila Heti lives in Toronto.

Sheila Heti's profile page

Editorial Reviews

... hilarious, occasionally Seinfeldesque and frequently veer into Grimm Brotherland, fantastic, gruesome and creepy.

Toronto Star

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