Matrix considers Sentimental Exorcisms

'There was a moment about four or five pages into reading 'Just Watch: An Apologia,' the first story in David Derry's collection Sentimental Exorcisms, when I had to pause and give myself a bit of a slap. The story's narrator was in the midst of recounting how he, 'one of the University of Toronto's top English undergrads,' had made his first foray into voyeurism, and I was eating it up: every nervous twitch, every rustle of the curtains obscuring the window through which the narrator strained to peek. Then my realization - are you actually sympathizing with this lecherous, self-involved twenty-year-old? No.

But I had been ...[This is] Derry at his best, creating a character who does objectionable things, yes, but complicating him in such a way that the reader can't help but wonder whether he's so bad after all, if perhaps there's more to it than meets the eye'