Abstract

This collection of linked short stories concerns itself with the lives of young people coming of age in the punk subculture of downtown Toronto in the 1980s. Long third-person narratives are interposed with brief first-person monologues. The longer stories explore how the alienated characters, who are either unconsciously unwilling or psychologically incapable of articulating themselves, nevertheless inadequately fumble into moments of haphazard connection in which they resonate with each other in a way that suggests the possibility of at least limited evolution. The brief monologues are close-ups that allow a more immediate and intimate exposure of the ways in which the anonymous characters are constructed by the economic restrictions, family breakdowns, corporate-driven culture of simulacra, etc. that compose their world.