Knucklehead & Other Stories

Winner of the W. O. Mitchell/City of Calgary Award A debut collection, these stories are set in the corporeal world of adult endeavour: the mall, the office, the subdivision. It's these settings that W. Mark Giles exploits-locking his sights on eerily familiar characters, excavating their fears, intimacies, and the dark machinery behind their actions. He taps into our collective longing for moments of clarity and awe, recognizes our thwarted potential for wonder, and sees our secrets played out in cruelty. A strangely unified collection, unsettling and surprising, Knucklehead resides where the lines between real and imagined blur. Giles's penetrating view and unsentimental honesty shape these stories and push the reader's expectations of the "ordinary." These are mature and compelling narratives that encapsulate everything great about short fiction. They freeze a moment, but upon closer examination reveal something more, a message that resonates long after that story has been read.