Oh, My Darling

“Exceptional stories . . . a joy to read. Lambert’s language and characters shine on every page.” —BARBARA GOWDY

Oh, My Darling features ten remarkable stories about contemporary life, family, children and love. They circle loosely around the love cry of the title story: the exaltation and heartbreak, the subtle acts of revenge and the moments of revelation that make up relationships.

The stories include a tale narrated by a woman’s own breast cancer, which speaks to her in a mesmerizing and sadistic voice about her dysfunctional life; a couple who plan an environmental protest by placing the husband inside a cage in front of an aquarium; a woman who becomes embroiled with a young drug dealer as she tries to understand her son’s addiction; a young boy who attempts to deal with his father’s Nazi past on a Caribbean island; an old man who obsesses over the size of his coffin and whether he can be transported in it down his narrow apartment stairs; and a couple who uncover their secret fate at the Delphic Oracle in Greece.

Passionate and precise, these stories are infused with an uncommon originality. This is writing of the very first order by one of Canada’s best writers.

SHAENA LAMBERT is the author of Radiance, a novel, and The Falling Woman, a collection of stories. Her fiction has been nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award and the Ethel Wilson Prize and has been published to critical acclaim in Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia. Her stories have been published in The Walrus, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All Story, and Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Vancouver with her family.