Suburban Pornography is contemporary literature, which documents Canadian urban life in a raw and naked manner. The prose is stripped--minimalist, direct, urgent, unflinching. The stories revolve around ordinary characters and problems--people stuck in bad relationships or jobs. Some yearn for something just beyond their grasp, something authentic to knock them out of their malaise. Their frailties and obsessions are front and centre. They are garbage men, bus drivers, waitresses, soup kitchen clients, and neighbourhood perverts--tired and busy, too weary to contemplate--from social conditions that sanction only mere existence in redemption's agony and fleeting glory.
"Yes! A title that delivers. Hard, gritty writing. Gritty, hard stories? Very, very enjoyable reading. No pretension, no bullshit."
Mitch Adams, Broken Pencil, Fiction pick of the issue
"Firth's characters are real: we can hear them speak; we can almost smell the booze on their breath and the grease on their clothes. We sympathize with them, we feel their frustration, and we revel in their victories. Suburban Pornography, along with the other recent collections that have blown me away ... are proof positive that the much mourned short story is alive and well, and making a strong
Tony O' Neill, 3:AM Magazine
"The 17 stories in Suburban Pornography take a blowtorch to that idea of Canadian literature, setting it alight and crafting out of its ashes a series of meditations on urban malaise that are minimalist, unflinching, and profane ... Firth does what so few Canadian writers even attempt: he writes bravely about the way we live now, and for that, he should be congratulated."
