No One Knows about Us

***ALISTAIR MACLEOD PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION: SHORTLIST***

Award-winning author Bridget Canning returns with an incisive and unsettling collection that considers what it means to be good—or to be a villain—in our relationships with others.

No One Knows about Us is a collection of short fiction about how we find connection in a disconnected world. Relationships exist under the wire, and conversations and revelations occur in secret pockets, both literally and physically. The characters conduct secret acts of vengeance, kindness, and vigilantism motivated by their hidden yearnings, grudges, losses, fears, and fixations.

AUTHOR

Bridget Canning

Bridget Canning’s debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was a finalist for the 2017 BMO Winterset Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the NL Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. It is currently being adapted for film. Her second novel, Some People’s Children, was a finalist for the 2020 BMO Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Award. Bridget holds an MA in creative writing from Memorial University and a Masters of Literacy Education from Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2019, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL. She lives in St. John’s, where she writes and teaches.

Reviews

“One of Canning’s greatest gifts as a writer is her ability to weave complex plotlines together throughout her narrative, offering readers little snippets that keep us wanting to know more as we get closer to the end.”

– The Miramichi Reader

“Many of the stories in the collection require readers to sit comfortably with moral ambiguity…Canning’s fiction is as intriguing for what it leaves out as for what gets included…”

– That Shakespearean Rag

“In style, she doesn’t give into the pretty. There’s grit and funk, even at festive outings and a family encircling a terminally ill parent. But there’s snap, backbone, and gratitude too.”

– The Telegram