We may be lost but we are never alone. That is the message to be found in Brenda Hasiuk’s new collection of short stories, Boy Lost in Wild. Adrift in unfamiliar surroundings, strangers to the strangers around them, the characters in each story feel lost even though they are inextricably tied to one another. A foreign student, mugged on the streets of Winnipeg, befriends his landlord. A young man bursting with rage shares a quiet moment with a sibling. The tears of a child who cannot find his way home are soothed by the voice of an elderly woman.
Through sparkling prose, Hasiuk’s stories ring true, cutting through the alienation of urban life and lighting the threads that bind us to one another.
Brenda Hasiuk’s short stories have appeared in some of Canada’s top literary journals, including The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, and Prism International. Her previous two novels have received much critical acclaim. Boy Lost in Wild is Brenda’s first collection of short stories. Brenda lives in Winnipeg, the coldest major city on earth, with her husband and two children.
Brenda Hasiuk has written a collection of smart, sharply observed stories. Her young characters come from different backgrounds but they’re linked by the fading inner city they all inhabit, and by their efforts to make sense of their world and the choices it offers them. Hasiuk investigates the lives of her characters with sympathy and with an unsentimental optimism.
Hasiuk challenges stereotypes by illuminating her characters' inner lives to reveal their contradictory emotions, contemplations and remembrances, while capturing the connectedness and disparity of Winnipeg's inner city.
There are facts, there is fiction, and then there is truth. That’s where these stories land—upright and on both feet. These sharply focused stories are confident, engaging, and wise. You won’t want to miss a word.