What Sort of Man

Description

A young father high on Ritalin longs to leap into the tiger enclosure. A teacher who has been stood down for accessing porn on a school computer wants to re-establish contact with his teenage daughter. A carer out on a day trip is desperate to find a working toilet for his adult charge. What Sort of Man is a potent collection of stories that goes head to head with the crisis of contemporary masculinity, and is as exhilarating as it is harrowing.

In 2011 Breton Dukes' first collection of critically acclaimed short stories, Bird North, was published. That year, Breton was also the recipient of the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson Writer's Bursary. Empty Bones (2014), a novella and five short stories, is his second book. Breton lives with his wife in Kaikorai Valley, Dunedin. He is a telephonist for the government. His interests include rabbit shooting, tenting and cookery.

These are finely focused stories, done with the confidence of a writer who knows precisely what he wants to show, and how to show it. Their telling, and their method of telling, is confidently his own." - Vincent O'Sullivan, Landfall Review Online "Life is a series of isolations, now more than ever, and the way that Dukes captures, with photo-perfect detail, the soul of a person in isolation, is not just excellent, but relevant. We're not at our most alone when we're not around other people, we're at our most alone when we can't even sit with ourselves." - Sam Brooks, The Spinoff