The Young in Their Country is Richard Cumyn's fifth collection of short fiction. It is the product of a seasoned writer whose talents show no sign of diminishing, who continues to create concise, compelling dramas from the stuff of everyday life. The stories are grounded in gritty, unpolished urban and rural landscapes--sketched with immediacy and precision. In Richard Cumyn's stories, grimy surfaces are left exposed, unpleasant smells linger in the air. His characters struggle with demons and delusions that push them to and sometimes over the edge: a teacher who suddenly thinks his students can see beneath his clothes to his naked skin, a husband and father nursing an unreasonable resentment toward his wife's successful ex-husband, a once-famous artist living off the grid, hiding from his failures. As each narrative unwinds, the author stands back and allows his characters to reveal their flaws and misapprehensions, to make their mistakes and express their regrets. Not much happens, but not much needs to happen. These surprising and unusual stories are more about interior lives than outward actions. Using prose that seems not so much written as uttered, with the natural rhythms of plain speech, Cumyn demonstrates a dogged determination to burrow as far inside each story as possible, to mine its dramatic possibilities. The Young in Their Country is dirty realism at its best. ( )