The Video Watcher

Raymond Carver meets Bret Easton Ellis in this fast-paced novel about vicarious pleasure, people-watching, and social disconnection.
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. Shawn Curtis Stibbards lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is his first novel.