The Devil You Know

The Devil You Know is the follow-up volume to Farrell’s critically acclaimed debut collection, Sugar Bush & Other Stories.

These stories deal with sex, love, work, birth, and death in alternately moving, shocking, funny, and at times devastating ways. Whether these characters are facing the death of a parent, bad love choices, the possibility of unwanted pregnancy, the rupture of friendships, teen violence, or the exploration of sado-masochistic sex, Farrell exposes their ticking cores and pulls the reader along every step of the way.

Praise for The Devil You Know:

"Farrell excels at very short, sharply realized tales that display a startling repertoire of styles and structural innovations." (The Vancouver Review)

“Farrell effectively forges her image as a bad-ass version of Alice Munro. Like Munro, she’s a short story writer who focuses on the lives of girls and women in small-town Canada, but Farrell’s characters get high on mushrooms and dabble in BDSM.”(The Georgia Straight)

"Make no mistake; The Devil You Know belongs on the shelf alongside Nights Below Station Street. In this confident, insightful, often horrifyingly funny collection, Jenn Farrell distinguishes herself as one of Canada’s finest contemporary writers of short fiction. Here are working class family dramas boiled down to the bone. Quick and mean as a Virginia Slim and bright and harsh as a Rexall at midnight, Farrell never fails to bring us down to earth to meet those beautiful, flawed, undeniably human devils we know so well. Refreshingly honest, impeccably written. A very, very good book.” (Elizabeth Bachinsky, Governor General's Award Nominee for Home of Sudden Service)