Listless, bored, alienated, and mistrustful, Trace Patterson has finished his first year of university and is living with a drunken aunt in North Van. He divides his nights between slasher films and high school house parties. When two old buddies resurface, however-one in a psych ward, and the other on a paranoia bender-Trace's careless-if-not-carefree existence becomes paralyzed by self-doubt. Does he actually want to help his friends, or is he secretly hoping they'll go over the edge? With its cast of brutally shallow characters, The Video Watcher is an American Psycho for the age of social disaffection.
"There's a sweet, lonely menace to Shawn Stibbards' world.... You get the feeling that at any moment Trace, the video watcher of the title, will be revealed as an angel or a serial killer... Utterly compelling."
Annabel Lyon, author The Sweet Girl
"Raymond Carver meets Brett Easton Ellis in nineties North Vancouver. The Video Watcher, with unnerving precision, shows us a West Coast seldom-if ever-experienced in Canadian fiction."
Zsuzsi Gartner, Giller-shortlisted author of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives
