The Tiny Wife
The robbery was not without consequences. The consequences were the point of the robbery. It was never about money. The thief didn’t even ask for any. That it happened in a bank was incidental. It could have just as easily happened in a train station or a high school or the Musée d’Orsay. It has in the past and it will in the future, and shortly after three p.m. on Wednesday, February 21st, it happened inside Branch #117 of the British Bank of North America.
A thief charges into a bank with a loaded gun, but he does not ask for money; what he asks for, instead, is the object of greatest significance currently in the possession of each patron. The thief then leaves, and the patrons all survive, but strange things soon begin to happen to them: One survivor’s tattoo jumps off her ankle and chases her around; another wakes up to find that she’s made of candy; and Stacey Hinterland discovers that she’s shrinking, incrementally, a little every day, and nothing that her husband or son do can reverse the process. The Tiny Wife is a fable about losing yourself in circumstances and finding yourself in the the love of another.
‘Somebody should write Mr. Kaufman a letter and thank him for his tender heart and the way he puts things down so gently.’
— Sheila Heti
‘There are very few Canadian authors, other than Sheila Heti, Yann Martel, and occasionally Atwood, willing to submerge that deeply into magic.... [Kaufman's] prose is so refreshingly heartfelt and natural that he makes it easy to believe.’
— The Coast (Halifax)
Andrew Kaufman is the author of the novels All My Friends Are Superheroes and The Waterproof Bible.