An astounding debut collection of stories about evangelical culture, ideological polarization, and the messiness and mysteries of humanity.
A Vancouver mother convinces her opioid-addicted son to attend church, and sparks her own personal emergency. A jet-setting consultant tries to help a rural fundamentalist teen, as her own secular life unravels in Toronto, Davos, and beyond. An atheist doctor attempts to expose a hipster megachurch pastor as a closeted hypocrite.
At a time when the end feels nigh for many, End Times brings together an expansive cast of the devout and the dissenting, the elderly and the young, immigrants, elites, the burned-out, and the lonely, exploring our hidden anxieties and longings.
*Finalist for the 2023 Quebec Writers’ Federation Concordia University First Book Prize.*
“These emotionally and intellectually powerful stories have me riveted.”
— Sarah Selecky, Giller finalist and author of This Cake is for the Party and Radiant Shimmering Light
“Michelle Syba’s stories are like vessels of precious metal, their beauty and capaciousness slyly concealing the fact that they were refined in fire. It’s rare to encounter the drama of faith and its aftermath rendered with such humanity, ferocity, and grace.”
— Meghan O’Gieblyn, author of Interior States and God, Human, Animal, Machine
“In these beautiful and bewildering stories, Michelle Syba extends to her characters an extraordinary grace. Though the pen feels secular, Syba’s meditations on faith are suffused with mystery. They carve a space between certainty and humility, where orthodoxies secular and sacred are laid bare. And, when we least expect it, they burst into moments of revelation.”
— Emer O’Toole, author of Girls Will Be Girls
“Syba’s compulsively readable End Times offers a rich exploration of religious faith and its absence.”
—The Literary Review of Canada
“The stories in End Times…carry a universal quality that allows the reader to reflect on their own lived experiences.”
—The Montreal Review of Books
“a thrilling first collection”
—Jury of the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize