Movement is the key to this collection. The settings for the stories in Aquarium range from metropolis to hamlet, from a Florida retirement community to a northern Ontario reserve on the brink of freeze-up. The people in Aquarium are as varied as its locales; the characters are landlords, actors, drinkers, painters, teachers, doctors, steelworkers, fishermen, students, shopkeepers, weathermen, clerks and security guards. Couples are a recurrent theme: the dreams and devices by which lovers join or drift apart. About the Author: Mike Barnes is the author of Calm Jazz Sea, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Aquarium, winner of the 1999 Danuta Gleed Award for best first book of stories by a Canadian, and The Syllabus, a novel. His stories have appeared twice in Best Canadian Stories, three times in The Journey Prize Anthology, and won the Silver Medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards. He was the subject of a feature issue of The New Quarterly (Summer 2001) which included an interview and three new stories. Formerly a piano teacher, fishing guide, janitor, steelworker, dishwasher, clock salesman, security guard, English teacher, in recent years he has been working as a private tutor. He lives in Toronto.
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