Cities of Weather Stories

Nominated for the Quebec Writers' Federation's 2005 McAuslan First Book Prize, Cities of Weather is a collection of eleven short stories that place readers alongside quirky, loveable — and often hilarious — characters as they make their way through their lives. Each story builds in scope and significance until a final crescendo where the characters must confront the fortunes they have prepared. An obsessive sculptress finds herself alone after lying to everyone she knows; a gay telemarketer who fantasises about flying lands at the romantic mercy of a beautiful rock star; two roommates compete to write better eulogies after a tragic car accident kills their friends. Although the style of each story reflects the different mentalities of its characters, the collection itself is unified through the overarching metaphor of weather and by characters that reveal their fates by re-surfacing in subsequent stories. Lushly described, the settings of these stores are as diverse as the characters that inhabit them: Montreal just after its beautiful and dangerous ice storm, Manhattan trapped in an autumn drought. Cities of Weather is both funny and human, showing that there is beauty and significance at every turn.