Walt

January 12, 2015
Newfoundland journalist and author Wangersky is a versatile and acclaimed writer whose last short story collection Whirl Away won the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Now, in a novel that keeps creepier with every page, he introduces the reader to Walt, a janitor in a grocery store, who has taken to collecting the shopping lists that people leave behind. These lists are written on scraps of unwanted paper that reveal unintended details of the shopper's lives to Walt, who uses this information to track down and watch select shoppers. After the suspicious disappearance of his wife, the police have him on their radar; they just don't realize how much trouble Walt has been up to. Every page takes the reader a little deeper into his life, slowly revealing just how disturbed he is and the things that he might be capable of. Though it takes a little time to really build up to it, the end leaves you feeling deeply unsettled and thinking twice about where you leave your shopping lists and whether your windows are covered. Agent: Shaun Bradley, Transatlantic Agency.

May 1, 2016
Walt is 50 years old. He works in a grocery store as part of the cleanup crew. He's married, but his wife left him. He likes to fish grocery lists out of the trash and imagine what the people who wrote them might be like. Sometimes he's fortunate enough to learn who they arewhen someone uses a piece of letterhead to write their list, for exampleand then he can really insinuate himself into that person's life (it's amazing what you can find out on the Internet). Oh, and the police think Walt might have murdered his wife. This is a cracking good story, alternating between chapters narrated by Walt and third-person chapters detailing the cops' investigation. The story's vividly evoked and unusual setting, St. John's, Newfoundland, gives the novel an extra zing. Author Wangersky, who lives in St. John's, has a smallish but devoted following (he's written several acclaimed novels), and with any luck, this one will introduce him to a new, larger audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)