Act Normal: Stories

Greg Hollingshead is a sly and nimble writer. He has great range, but even more than that he has access to great feeling, which is evident throughout this surprising and exciting new collection of stories. Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings 

Every sentence in Act Normal is a surprise. In fact, the stories are the sentences, each one veering into the next shock, until you’re far from the expected territory. Greg Hollingshead gives us what all great short story writers do: the pleasure of breaking with pattern for the wild and strange. I found myself rereading every paragraph, amazed, not wanting to leave behind a single word. Tamas Dobozy, author of Siege 13, winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

Reading this book is like entering an apparently normal, well-built house only to find that it has left the ground and is now floating. Funny, smart, amazingly unpredictable stories by one of this country's finest writers. Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander

The stories of Greg Hollingshead are utterly unique, utterly strange and utterly exhilarating in their offbeat, offhand brilliance. There is no writer like him in Canada. Lynn Coady, author of Hellgoing, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize

The master is back! And wow, what a book: nothing normal here — twelve stunning new stories by the great Greg Hollingshead that will knock you upside the heart and break your head — flush with dizzyingly brilliant insights into the contemporary dilemma, every line is cast in existential magic. Here's a fully-dilated peek into the secret lives of men and women on the brink. Lee Henderson, author of The Man Game

brilliant...fiendishly good Emily Donaldson, Toronto Star

Hollingshead’s stories are admirable in their refusal to offer their reader a conventional experience . . . Steven W. Beattie, The Globe and Mail

...a poignant, darkly comedic collection of stories predicated on the everyday risk of accidents. Daily Xtra

Funny, thought-provoking, sometimes gutwrenching, sometimes tender, and always whimsical, these new tales by one of Canada’s most accomplished and celebrated writers will stay with you long after you reluctantly put the book down. Winnipeg Review

Mining his astute observational skills, Hollingshead writes with a clear-eyed awareness of the human foibles that can make a mess of the world. Susan G. Cole, NOW Magazine

Few other writers represent the confusion of modern life in a way that is as individual, light, and succinct. Quill & Quire