These are stories of a twentysomething generation, growing up in the small towns and cities of Canada, now confronting the universal dilemmas of life in the real world. No tidy coming-of-age collection, Pyper?s stories are populated with characters who struggle to reach out -- sometimes painfully, sometimes comically, and not always successfully -- to make sense of their seemingly fractured condition in an equally disaffected universe. First love, first lust, first high, first terrible moment of awareness that in a single moment, life can change forever -- this is shimmering, profound writing that moves from subtly detailed moments of awakening to often brutally shattering epiphanies.