A search for the consistency of life in a city that is both everywhere and nowhere. In The World As It Would Be, we find ourselves in a version of Edmonton rendered in the sharp lines of "realist surrealism." Here, the city is a stage for a desperate experiment in fatherhood. Gilbert Streetman, a man living on the sidelines of his own life, chooses François—a man as lost as he is—to be a surrogate for the son he will never meet. As François drifts through the "bittersweet marmalade" of the city, he struggles to fulfill a mission he doesn't understand. His journey is one of "hunches" and missteps, a testament to the idea that one cannot lead another out of the fog when they are submerged in it themselves. It is only years later, in the quiet realizations of his son Francis, that the sediment of these lives finally settles into something resembling peace. The exploration continues in Lucinda Magnifica, a clinical yet poignant study of the "trap of growth." Through the eyes of Lucinda, the systemic price of civilization is weighed against the individual spirit. Gaston Synnott weaves a narrative where time is a needle stitching together disparate lives. It is a world where the unexplainable is accepted, where the present often disagrees with us, and where we must steer through the bittersweet chunks of existence until we find our way. To love.