The Canadian city of Vancouver has undergone a rather grim transformation at the pen of Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner. Gartner’s newly published book of short stories titled Better Living Through Plastic Explosives offers an introspective look into the author’s futuristic imagining of Vancouver, a city where an Olympic mascot kidnaps a young boy and IKEA product names form the basis of an erotic language.
‘I would say it is a portrait of Vancouver, my Vancouver,’ Gartner told Reuters. ‘I’ve created my own kind of mythology, set in the near future, of how I view the city itself. I map different psychic and demographic spaces, but telling the stories I like to tell, which are dark satire.’
