The sixteen stories in A Short Journey by Car give us a cast of characters struggling with forces that perplex and threaten to consume them. From a turn-of-the-century Parisien café where a waiter witnesses the birth of modern cinema to a reminiscence about swimming lessons among sisters who are struggling with bigger contingencies, we come upon people in the midst of upheaval reacting with humour, anger, and, often enough, grace.

Durcan introduces us to a world of blissfully deluded medical research subjects, riot cops and activists with startlingly similar preoccupations, a toilet smuggler ambivalent in his pursuit of the American dream, and sons at once dutiful and vengeful.

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