Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Beggar's Garden: Short Story
    The Beggar's Garden: Short Story
    The Beggar's Garden: Short Story
    Ebook44 pages36 minutes

    The Beggar's Garden: Short Story

    By Michael Christie

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In the titular story of Michael Christie’s critically acclaimed debut collection, The Beggar’s Garden, Sam Prince moves into the shed behind his house as his marriage falls apart. He meets a local panhandler and tries to help him sort out his life—even though he can’t find the courage to fix his own.

    The Beggar’s Garden follows a diverse group of characters, from a bank manager to a drug addict to a retired Samaritan, a web designer, and a car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Michael Christie’s darkly funny debut collection won the Vancouver Book Award; it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

    HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 13, 2012
    ISBN9781443421829
    The Beggar's Garden: Short Story
    Author

    Michael Christie

    MICHAEL CHRISTIE received his MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Prior to this, he worked in a homeless shelter on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and provided outreach to the severely mentally ill. A former professional skateboarder, he is a senior writer for Color Magazine, an award-winning publication that celebrates skateboarding culture. Michael Christie lives in Thunder Bay, and is working on his next book, a novel.

    Read more from Michael Christie

    Related to The Beggar's Garden

    Related ebooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      1181 Durfee Avenue

      Jan 5, 2021

      1181 Durfee Avenue
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lost In Time

      Oct 5, 2022

      Lost In Time
      5 min read

    • Article

      Life Before Death

      Feb 1, 2018

      Life Before Death
      14 min read

    • Article

      Scenes From A Marriage

      Mar 23, 2022

      Scenes From A Marriage
      6 min read

    • Article

      Scenes From A Marriage

      Mar 23, 2022

      Scenes From A Marriage
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Van

      Dec 5, 2023

      The Van
      2 min read

    • Article

      By the RIVER’S EDGE

      Mar 22, 2023

      By the RIVER’S EDGE
      9 min read

    • Article

      FIRST Steps

      Sep 26, 2023

      FIRST Steps
      6 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      First Steps

      Sep 14, 2021

      First Steps
      6 min read

    • Article

      To The Manure Born

      Jun 1, 2020

      To The Manure Born
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Wild Laughter

      Jul 24, 2020

      The Wild Laughter
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Bad Boy Of Hollywood

      Dec 11, 2020

      The Bad Boy Of Hollywood
      9 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      He threw the pale pink envelopes into the trashand smashed the Mickey Mouse phone hanging up. And when his wife asked you okay? he said okay,then took a twistoff to the back, screaming FUCK so loud he spooked the treefrogs and cicadas.He’d got canned

      2 min read

    • Article

      L. R.

      Dec 6, 2022

      L. R.
      25 min read

    • Article

      The Ballad Of Cosmic Dave

      May 5, 2022

      The Ballad Of Cosmic Dave
      6 min read

    • Article

      Manifesting Magic

      Mar 3, 2022

      Manifesting Magic
      4 min read

    • Article

      Manhattan, 2035

      Mar 26, 2021

      There were problems with being the daughter of a former it girl. First of all, the designation, which, as her mother grew older, warped slightly across the society pages, affecting her mood. Most people remembered her mother’s modelling stints, brush

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bucksaw

      Jun 3, 2019

      From the back seat of the car, Benjamin read the gold-lettered sign at the edge of the rolling green lawn and said, “Why do they call it a correctional facility?” He’d meant only to think the question, rather than speak it, but lately, more and more,

      23 min read

    • Article

      Wise old Mrs Merrow

      Jul 27, 2020

      Littlesea was everything the description said: a white stone cottage with beams and higgledy-piggledy walls and steps away from a tiny quay in a private bay. It would have been the perfect spot for honeymooners had it not had just the one single bed

      8 min read

    • Article

      Drawn to THE MOORS

      Feb 8, 2022

      Drawn to THE MOORS
      11 min read

    • Article

      21,915

      Jul 7, 2022

      21,915
      2 min read

    • Article

      21,915

      Jul 7, 2022

      21,915
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Beggar's Garden

    4/5

    20 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This collection of short stories is set in the “riotous and hellish, but strangely contained, slum of [Vancouver’s] Downtown Eastside”. This area which includes part of Hastings Street is infamous across Canada. As one of Christie’s characters observes: “It was as if the country had been tipped up at one end and all the sorry b!@#$%$s had slid west, stopping only when they reached the sea, perhaps because the sea didn’t want them either.”Told from various points of view – the grandfather who leaves food and clothing in dumpsters that he knows his drug-addicted grandson dives, an addict who has just spent his entire welfare cheque on a giant dope trip, a woman who runs a second-hand store, and so on – the stories all intrigued me. Short story collections always seem to have a few weaker pieces. I didn’t think this had any.Read this if: you’re interested in knowing just how close any one of us is to being on the street; or you’d like some insight into the people in a Canadian city’s slum. 4 stars
    • 4/5
      This is a fine collection of linked short stories. Christie worked in homeless shelter in the rough Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver BC. Clearly he was touched by the people he met there, for the empathy he feels for the people he writes about -- the addicted, the mentally ill, the forgotten and marginalized of society -- is palpable. What's equally impressive is that Christie writes about them without it feeling exploitative. He looks deeply into their lives, their thoughts and their hearts, but there's no sense of voyeurism, just as the is no moralizing. The sympathy he creates is entirely due to his talent at making us see his characters as humans no so unlike us, broken, fragile, floundering, perhaps, but still us and not some judgment-inducing "them". The writing is clean and precise, and creates the perfect tone -- neither too stark, nor too romantic. I recommend this book. I would be surprised if you don't find some aspect of yourself within its pages.
    • 4/5
      I really wanted to love this book! After all, I have lived in Vancouver for many years, and I am familiar with the plight of those in Vancouver Downtown Eastside. This is a small volume of nine short stories (262pages) that take place on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. To the author's credit, the stories are told without judgement, morality, or sentimentality. The author worked on the Vancouver Downtown Eastside for a time as a homeless shelter, reaching out to those in need, so I'm sure he knows his subject. However, I found that I was left a bit cold by some of the short stories. I found the book to be uneven, which I suppose is not unexpected in book of short stories. Some tales really grabbed me - like "Discard" - the story of a widower left on his own, who decides to seek out his long forgotten grandson by going to live in the alleys where unbeknowst to his grandson, he meets up with him and they join forces." Good Bye PorkPie Hat" was a look into rooming houses in the downtown Eastside and a man addicted to crack. " King Me" was a fascinating look into the lives - one in particular - of those still left in Vancouver's Mental Hospital, Riverview. That story was quite heartbreaking -and yet - those people probably have it better than those who have been turned out of Riverview Hospital to the Downtown Eastside. Another story tugged at my heartstrings -" The Queen of Cans and Jars". In summary, it's the tale of a woman who worked in the shoe department of Woodwards. After losing her job at Woodwards she choses to run and live in within the premises of a second hand thrift shop in the Downtown Eastside. Another stab at the heart concerns the story of a mentally disabled man, who relies on a somewhat dishonest buddy to manage his affairs, rather than live in a boarding house. I don't want to say to much more - so as not to spoil the book for any of you. The last story is an interesting twist of a tale. While this book did not grab me the way I expected - in retrospect, I supppose the majority of the stories were worthwhile reads. This author did particulary well in portraying the poor, the marginalized, and the mentally ill -and how so many of us could be but a short step from those on the street. For that reason alone, perhaps this is an important read.

    Book preview

    The Beggar's Garden - Michael Christie

    The Beggar’s Garden

    Michael Christie

    Contents

    Cover

    Title Page

    The Beggar’s Garden

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    The Beggar’s Garden

    Sam Prince lay awake, listening to a squad of raccoons loot his recycling. Since moving into the slumping structure behind his house—it backed onto the alley and was either a shed or a small garage, he’d never been sure—he’d taught himself to distinguish the noise of the raccoons licking his containers clean from the more orderly clanking of the men who came on trailered bikes to rummage his blue bins for anything they could return for deposit. There, in the interminable dark hours of recent weeks, Sam had come to the fearful knowledge that the alley doubled as a nocturnal highway where all valuable things were to be carted away.

    The structure itself was a rickety assemblage of rotting boards with two barn-style doors that swung outward. Sam had never made good on the promise to both Anna and himself to undertake its renovation. It held their bikes, wicker garden chairs, rubberized bins of what remained of Cricket’s childhood memorabilia, and an arsenal of tools he’d got when his father had passed—tools his father hadn’t much used either. Black mould speckled the exposed rafters above, where a coiled badminton net, Cricket’s crutches from four years ago, and Sam’s old hockey equipment had found permanent lodging. The garage had always been the storehouse for the scraps of their life together, and Sam considered it fitting that it was here he’d sought refuge.

    Earlier that night, he’d discovered some freeze-dried meals they’d purchased for a kayaking expedition in the Yukon that had never got booked. He boiled chicken à la king in a foil bag over a camping stove and spooned it from a dented tin plate. While he ate he listened to hockey on the radio. The stream of the announcer’s play-by-play kept his mind from betraying him, as it did without fail during any manner of silence. His power supply was an orange extension cord running to the side of his house—a four-bedroom built in 1912 that he and Anna had gutted and renovated at great cost. It had become a place Sam could not tolerate. Mostly, he did not care for the linger of his family’s scent, in the towels, the carpet, even his own clothes, which served only to feed the dark ruminations that dredged his mind without mercy. The house had always felt much too large, and now, after he’d locked all its doors and dropped his house key down the manhole out front, it was tomblike, monolithic, laying a wide, grim shadow over his yard.

    The ordeal had commenced benignly enough. Anna, a casting director who’d just wrapped a gruelling sci-fi film that had gone way over budget, had taken Cricket to her parents’ in Calgary for spring break so they could ski at nearby Banff. Sam was to enjoy some self-time, as Anna would say. The visit

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1