What You Need

Fiction. Short Fiction. Loyalties collide with long-buried love, a man builds a nuclear bomb in his garage, and children walk up walls. The stories in WHAT YOU NEED beautifully recount the rawness of human experience. Andrew Forbes's characters struggle to escape the things that hold them in their all-too-ordinary lives, falling victim to fate, to one another, and to self- sabotage. These are stories about failure and yearning, yet they remind us of the humour and humanity in even the worst decision. "WHAT YOU NEED is an excellent book, and arguably the debut of the year insofar as short fiction is concerned. Every character is fully realized and three- dimensional; every story sparkles with granular detail and the kind of profound emotional insight that only comes with having lived the difficult passage between the expectations of youth and the ambiguities of adulthood. The book is full of wit, and, despite its subject matter, laugh-out- loud funny in places."--The Fiddlehead