Lives of Short Duration

Afterword by Alistair MacLeod

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The Terris are engaging people, but they are a family in collapse. Alcoholism, drugs, and loveless sex have reduced them to a petty and wasted bunch. Worse, they typify aspects of the larger community besieged by financial woes and by creeping economic and cultural Americanization.

What David Adams Richards accomplishes is no mean feat: his characters are at times vicious, sleazy, and even outright dim, yet he manages to entitle them to the interest and sympathy of the reader.

Even more now than at its first publication in 1981, Lives of Short Duration’s sharp, essential insights have significance for readers seeking to understand the modern Canadian predicament.

$19.95

September 20, 2011

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Born in 1950 in Newcastle, New Brunswick, David Adams Richards was the third of William and Margaret Richards' six children. He found his calling at the age of fourteen, after reading Oliver Twist, and embarked on a life of extraordinary purpose, one which he says didn't help his finances: "Sometimes . . . I thought it would be better if I were a plumber, but I wouldn't be very good."

At the age of twenty and after finishing his first novel, The Keeping of Gusties, Richards went in search of a community of writers. His quest ended when he met a group of academics at the University of New Brunswick. Richards would hitch-hike from his home in Newcastle to Fredericton every Tuesday night…