“The most memorable stories work with the formula but have added depth. Mixing satiric comedy with pathos, the married dad in “Raccoons” pretends to search the garage for the titular pest. In fact he is digging for sex tapes—about which a furious woman (an affair that flamed out) has been making threatening phone calls, while he strives to maintain the illusion of being nothing but a loving husband and father.”
What are you hiding from the loved ones in your life?
This is the question that Toronto writer Russell Smith explores in the stories of his new collection, Confidence. There are hidden sexual yearnings, memories of lost loves and dreams of babies and other lives that could have been lived. Everyone’s got a secret and they’re all struggling to keep those secrets hidden even as their lives fall apart, from a harried father trying to get a sex tape back to an ex-girlfriend before his wife finds out in “Raccoons” to a husband planning an amateur voyeurism site behind his wife’s back in “Gentrification.”
Everybody is hiding something, says Canadian author Russell Smith. Some secrets are enormous, others just embarrassing — and far too many are a threat to long-term, committed relationships.
For 20 years, the writer has been known for sharp and funny stories about the sex lives and naughty habits of the city’s upper crust. His latest, Confidence, zeroes in on the private lives of the aging downtown Toronto elite.
Smith joins Shad to talk shame, secrecy and his own missteps.
“People want everything at once. They want their domestic life, and they also want their wild life,” he says.
q: Do you harbour a secret that’s easier to keep than to share? Do you agree with Smith that everyone — even the open books among us — have hidden chapters?
Here’s a bitchin’ track for Confidence. Click on the picture.
Coach House Press and Biblioasis invite you to join us for the book launch of Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis and Confidence by Russell Smith at 7:30pm on Tuesday, May 12th at The Bookshelf eBar (41 Quebec St. Guelph)!
Russell Smith’s writing is known for pulling no punches when it comes to taking digs at the darker side of urban life, something he says comes from a complex love-hate relationship he has with city life.
“The countryside is terribly boring to me. I like density. I think it’s because I didn’t grow up in a big city,” Smith, who grew up in Halifax, told The Early Edition’s Rick Cluff.
“I still feel a bit of wonder and marvel when I walk down the street on a Sunday afternoon and it’s packed with people — that’s something I always missed growing up.
Smith’s latest book, Confidence, is a collection of short stories that shows a darker side of urban dwellers, including mommy bloggers, PhD students, and experimental filmmakers, but he said people shouldn’t take offence to how they are portrayed.
“Satire always works that way. Satire is always making fun of something that a person comes from, a scene that a person knows, is an insider in, and that person is making fun of something that that person really, really loves.” To listen to the whole podcast CLICK here.
“Whatever the reason, Confidence finds Smith at the top of his game.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“It’s a delicious darkness that pervades Russell Smith’s latest short story collection, Confidence” — THIS magazine
Confidence reflects Smith at his best, a devastatingly deadpan chronicler of contemporary masculinity, and of social and sexual landscapes shifting tectonically like the urban spaces in which they are transacted. — Literary Review of Canada
Ottawa
Friday, April 24 at 6:30 at the Christ Church Cathedral
The Sound and the Fury with Russell Smith, Neil Smith and Sean Michaels,
featuring new music by Mike Dubue. Hosted by Michael Blouin
Vancouver Incite Festival
Wednesday, May 6, 7:30 at Alice MacKay room, Central Library
Admission is free, click here to register
Windsor
Thursday, May 14 time TBA at 1520 Wyandotte St. East
Launch at Biblioasis
Russell Smith 