Preferred Lies

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

Preferred lies are the ways the characters in these stories would like
to see the world and themselves. These are sad stories of lonely,
depressed, unfulfilled, loveless lives. Many of the characters are
trying to escape from the reality of small towns (often in the
Maritimes), poverty, and abusive fathers. They reminisce about loved
ones wronged in the past, deaths, suicides, unhappy marriages, and
infidelity, but also have more wistful memories of family life and
nostalgia for the childhood home. The sensitive persona of the
first-person narrator is often contrasted with the rough, hard-drinking,
hard-fighting, sporting men of the towns, but even this sensitive
persona takes advantage of women.

Wayne Curtis has written deeply felt and moving stories, but they can
become rather depressing taken as a whole.