Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair

Wise and humorous stories that explore people's extraordinary lives in suburbia's little wild spaces. At the heart of these fourteen short stories is refusal of the monotonous and the struggle for individuality in a place so relentlessly homogenous. Wise and humorous stories that explore people’s extraordinary lives in suburbia’s little wild spaces. Routinely maligned as a bastion of boredom and conformity, the suburb is examined in a different light in Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair. At the heart of these fourteen short stories is refusal of the monotonous and the struggle for individuality in a place so relentlessly homogenous. In his third short story collection, Mark Paterson introduces the town of Montclair, a fictional suburb in the North Shore of Montreal, where he celebrates characters who, out of restlessness, out of nothing, make their lives on the outskirts of the big city a little bit – or a lot – out of the ordinary. With Paterson’s trademark humour and emotion, Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair explores suburbia’s little wild spaces: the places hidden away in overgrown fields behind commercial buildings, beneath concrete schoolyard staircases, and in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants.