Loyalties collide with long-buried love, a man builds a nuclear bomb in his garage, and children walk up walls. The stories in What You Need beautifully recount the rawness of human experience. Andrew Forbes’s characters struggle to escape the things that hold them in their all-too-ordinary lives, falling victim to fate, to one another, and to self-sabotage. These are stories about failure and yearning, yet they remind us of the humour and humanity in even the worst decisions.