A strikingly original, tender, and darkly comic portrait of urban humanity in nine stories.

The Beggar’s Garden marks the arrival of a hugely engaging new voice in Canadian fiction. Brilliantly sure-footed, strikingly original, tender and funny, this memorable collection of nine linked short stories will delight as well as disturb.

The stories follow a diverse group of curiously interrelated Vancouverites--from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to mental patient to web designer to car thief--as they struggle against a unifying sense of loss, all while drifting through each other's lives like ghosts in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. These darkly comic and intoxicating stories, gleefully free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life -- for homes, drugs, shelter, love, forgiveness -- and collectively they offer a generous and vivid portrait of humanity, not just in Vancouver but in any modern urban centre. Stories range from the tragically funny opening story “Emergency” to the audacious, drug-fuelled rush of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” to the deranged and thrilling extreme of “King Me."

The Beggar’s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut, written with an exceptional eye and ear and heart.
 

Finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
One of Elle Canada's 'Hot 100 for 2011'
Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (the world's largest short story prize)
Longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize
Winner of the 2011 City of Vancouver Book Award
Finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2011
Amazon.ca Best Books of 2011: Top 100 Editors' Picks

"Reliable artistry vaults abruptly to flashing brilliance with King Me. Christie’s riveting creation of a contemporary Bedlam breathes an authenticity raising echoes of Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest... Then comes another flash, a small, polished gem of narrative flame: The Quiet... The book’s title story rounds off the collection...Christie’s prose here is like clear water, transparent yet dense with understanding, never swanning on lyricism when lucidity will do."
-Jim Bartley, The Globe and Mail

"The Beggar’s Garden takes the pulse of history by unsentimentally dramatizing the way a certain segment of society lives now, and in so doing stands as a sympathetic and compassionate examination of modern urban loneliness and disaffection."
-National Post

"I knew Mike Christie as a damned fine skateboarder and now I know Michael Christie as a damned fine author."
-vancouverisawesome.com

"...[F]illed with keenly observed detail and lively characterization...Every person in this book, no matter what their age, gender or peculiarity, is convincing and vivid. Their thoughts, perceptions and interactions are drawn in language so precise that they stand out in full colour in all their wisdom and foolishness, tragedy and absurdity. The more you read this, the better it gets."
-Winnipeg Free Press

"Michael Christie’s debut collection of nine linked stories is dazzling...straightforward, disarming prose."
-Quill & Quire (starred review)

"[A] skillfully composed collection...solemn authenticity...assured prose..."
-straight.com

"Michael Christie’s debut collection of short stories, The Beggar’s Garden, is about as good as a first book can be. Set in his native Vancouver and peopled with the down-and-out, the disenfranchised and disaffected, these stories are by turns funny, melancholy, bizarre and very, very real. Christie has a real gift for portraying his characters from the inside and making them completely convincing."
-Toronto Star

"[A]ll of the stories are touching, tender and raw, but at the same time, they are clever and humorous."
-Vancouver Sun

"Author Michael Christie worked in a homeless shelter in the Downtown Eastside with people with severe mental problems, some of society's most vulnerable people. Christie's stories are funny, warm and striking in their portrayal of these men and women."
-Ottawa Citizen

B.C. - based Michael Christie made heads turn with his darkly comic debut The Beggar's Garden. Christie introduces readers to a memorable cast of characters and to a confident new CanLit voice. After seeing him breathe literary life into Vancouver's downtown east side, we're ready to follow Christie anywhere. 

- CBC Books