In this debut collection, Robert McGill explores the heartaches and joys of people who are desperate to uncomplicate their complicated world. Through stories taking the form of YouTube monologues, pet-care instructions, school reports, or the unspoken thoughts of a young scholar obsessed with a famous Canadian writer, Simple Creatures also shows us the sometimes hilarious, often poignant ways in which our use of language shapes our relationships with others and ourselves. We meet a teenager who wants to live among a community of Bigfoot that he claims to have discovered in the woods; the widow of a famous endocrinologist after she gains custody of a chimpanzee from his lab; a boy whose fledgling hockey career is troubled by the fact that his name is Leo Gretzky; and a divorcee seeking out the mysterious author of a viral environmental pledge.