Last Words
Stories
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A haunting collection of stories exploring memory, loss, and the search for meaning in a world on the brink.
Hugh Graham's Last Words captures the passage of years and the weight of history through eleven character-driven stories. Meet travelers doomed to inertia, concupiscent women, bloody-minded intellectuals, and haunted drunks as they grapple with the complexities of human connection. From the quiet streets of Toronto to the battlefields of Europe, Graham's characters confront their pasts and struggle to find redemption in a seemingly chaotic world.
For readers of literary fiction and short story enthusiasts, Last Words offers a blend of intellectual stimulation and emotional resonance. Explore themes of identity, betrayal, and the human condition in this collection that lingers long after the final page. Discover why Exile Editions calls Hugh Graham one of Canada's most insightful voices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this impressive collection of short stories from Graham (The Vestibule of Hell), the characters children, drunks, intellectuals all tend to be bookish and introspective. Their worlds are all threatened by some looming disaster, named or unnamed. The book begins with a suspenseful and moving story that introduces John Last, a Canadian holed up in a Paris hotel. Breaking into his misanthropic existence, a brash American CIA operative named Howard recruits him to help thwart a terrorist attack, with surprising results. Several stories are told from the point of view of Henry, a child growing up in post-war Toronto surrounded by melancholy, vaguely incomprehensible adults; Death is the man who rents the attic room. In another tale, Elmira Rawlinson strikes up a romance with a boy named Tom in order to escape her abusive family, but the violence in her past has seeped into her and become inescapable. All of these stories have a dark tone, but they also contain an underlying current of gentle humor and empathy for their damaged characters. Graham's writing is rich and to be savored slowly. Readers are in for a great pleasure.
