European Sketchbook

About

European Sketchbook is a rough selection of short stories, blog entries, and excerpts from an unpublished novel by Brent Stephen Smith.

Sketchbook was written over the course of two months while being immersed in Central Europe. It is an ephemeral and imperfect collection of stories that burst to life with feelings of adventure, identity, loneliness, and fleeting time.

To preview some of the stories featured in European Sketchbook, try reading “Notes from the Underslept” and “It Was The Best of Times, It Was The Worst of Times: Dickensian Observations in Hamburg”.

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Print and ePub copies of European Sketchbook are currently available at Lulu.com.

Something Like Ideal

About

Something Like Ideal is the patchwork philosophy of a traveling busker, the inebriated Teague Grady. Drawn from his own hardship and confirmed by a summer spent observing a small town in southern Ireland, Teague unravels his thoughts on life in one spirit-filled evening with a lost lover.

He introduces a motley ensemble of characters, including foul-mouthed rake Fin Larkin, insecure bartender Alan Brennan, the stunning world traveler Sara Doran, and dying pub patriarch Paddy Shannon, weaving fly-on-the-wall vignettes of their lives with his own lovelorn lyrical poetry to present a case for his worldview.

A caustic drama, filled with dark humour, Something Like Ideal leaves open the slim possibility for hope.

Something Like Ideal is Brent Stephen Smith‘s first novel. A preview of the first chapter is available here.

Reviews

The Peak, the independent student voice of Simon Fraser University gave a mixed review on April 12, 2010.

“Although Something Like Ideal falls far short of literary greatness, there is something that should be noted about the author himself. This is Smith’s first novel, and he is relatively young, so while Something Like Ideal may not be nominated for a Giller any time soon, there’s reason to believe that in the future Smith will produce an excellent literary text. It’s just not this one.” - Jesse Jacobs

Buy

Print copies of Something Like Ideal are available through Lulu.com and Amazon (in all regions, including USA, Canada, and the UK for example) as well as many other online retailers, such as Barnes and Noble.

At the moment, digital copies (PDF-format) can be found at Lulu.com, while ePub-format copies can be found at Lulu.com and in the Apple iBookstore.