Suitable Precautions

When a woman uncovers a fortune in the attic, she begins a pilgrimage that takes her to the knife-edge between blessing and curse. Two fatherless children think Mr. Crisander is nothing more than a creepy next door neighbour—until they nearly kill his pot-bellied pig, and learn the secrets of his past. A young girl yammers about grade six, stealing cigarettes, and her sister’s no-food diet while being photographed by an internet pornographer.

The stories of Suitable Precautions are fresh and haunting. The characters within them exude a bitter beauty. And while their lives may be derailed, reclaimed, celebrated, or questioned, what holds them together is what also binds the stories in this collection: that is, a sense for the strange, tenuous fragility of human bonds. Suitable Precautions is an incisive and moving debut, and Laura Boudreau a voice to be remembered.