Any Day But This

by Kristjana Gunnars

On the Sunshine Coast of Canada, people live and die, come and go, caught in webs of their own making. The stories in Any Day But This follow those webs to their probable conclusions. Everyone has bad days and in these stories, people can hardly tell the bad days from the good. But the spirit is stronger than circumstance, and memory vies with determination. One thing remains true in all the variations of life hardly ever turns out as you expected. Here are stories of love and loss; of claiming, losing and reclaiming dignity, heartbreak, grief and joy. In these tightly wrought stories, characters find their masks removed to reveal their true selves within. One woman slowly realizes she belongs to a class she secretly despises, while another finally decides to face her worst fears and then cannot find them. A gregarious man unexpectedly finds himself alone and friendless while another bravely walks into life's worst nightmare and discovers it's not so bad. The dilemmas and conflicts Gunnars' characters face are those all of us encounter.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

First read this short story collection long before Goodreads, and didn't really remember much about it. On this reread, what I really liked was the small cameos in each story by characters in other stories in the collection. It was like the whole six degrees of separation idea and it had me flipping pages to reacquaint myself with their stories.
These stories are set in Canada, primarily BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Many of the characters have ties to Universities and most are at a crossroads in their lives.