You Are Not Needed Now is a brilliant new collection of stories from Annette Lapointe, author of the Giller-nominated novel Stolen.

Often set within the small towns of the Canadian prairies, the stories in You Are Not Needed Now dissect and examine the illusion of appearances, the myth of normalcy, and the allure of artifice. Lapointe presents characters who are extraordinarily real. They are often strange, vulgar, or messy: collecting blood-stained cotton pads and hairs from shower drains, slicing through skin to get more urgent medical treatment for testosterone withdrawal, storing the heart of a dead infant in a glass jar, kneeling on the dirty wet floors of a bathroom stall to perform oral sex.

Despite the diversity, strangeness, and complexity of her characters, Lapointe illustrates a remarkable understanding of each one. She knows them so intimately, and gives her reader the gift of knowing them, too. Lapointe is adept at looking closely, and exposes her characters' faults and vulnerabilities, humiliations and vanities, in illuminating and surprising ways. Trapped in this inescapable place-life-her characters linger somewhere between apathy and obsession, compassion and disregard, conflict and avoidance.

This is a bold collection of stories, rich with nuance, originality, and depth.

John Thomas Osborne, aka Tom Osborne, was born on Baffin Island in June of 1949. He has illustrated various books, including Mary Beth Knechtel’s under-acknowledged The Goldfish That Exploded and Social Credit for Beginners: An Armchair Guide (Pulp Press, 1986). He is also author of several books of poetry, including Under the Shadow of Thy Wings (1986), 9 Love Poems, and Please Wait for Attendant to Open Gate. His first novel Foozlers was published by Anvil Press in 2004 and was followed in 2006 by Dead Man In the Orchestra Pit (Anvil). Osborne grew up in Kamloops, B.C. and Vancouver, co-founded Pulp Press in the early 1970s, and currently resides in Maple Ridge, B.C.

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