Five Stories and a Wake

A lighthearted, absurdist journey through Europe's most unforgettable cities-where professional queuers stage personal revolutions, skulls demand five-star service, wooden puppets unionize, and careful giants lose shoes the size of ferryboats.

Brittney Pilarcik's debut collection celebrates the beautifully flawed humans who turn life's chaos into comedy. In Munich, a man who has built his identity on waiting in lines must cut one-or forfeit his soul to a woman nursing a forty-year-old pastry grievance. In Paris, a dead-flower salesman inherits an underground restaurant where the regulars are skulls, the soup is considering art school, and the health inspector only wants to sit near her grandmother. In Rome, an Englishman and his fez-wearing great-uncle face down a Vatican prophecy, a fifty-seven-year-old oxtail stew, and a palazzo that disputes gravity. In Prague, a theatre of wooden rebels stages a coup while a cockroach writes literary fiction in the wings. In Lisbon, a giant and a cellist hunt a missing shoe before the city's bakers weep into their dough. And in Amsterdam, a city holds a wake for Common Sense-casseroles included, bicycles politely excluded.

Playful, theatrical, and big-hearted, Five Cities and a Wake is a love letter to imperfection. For anyone who has ever apologized to a parking meter, offered to help a stranger file their taxes, or felt like a nervous system wearing khakis, these stories remind us that our flaws are not interruptions to our humanity. They are our humanity. And sometimes, the cure for a hard long day is simply a chuckle at the end of it.