In my writing and in my life, I look at life and relationships in terms of what is and isn’t expected or acceptable. I’ve been fascinated by how pleasure itself has become a dirty word and how it can be exploited and used. Women have so much more potential and are so much more complex than what is given to us by media and social constructs. I write to expose the underside of identity, beliefs, and especially how past encounters color and shape our ability to experience pleasure.
Sex and death fuel much of thirty-seven-year-old Brett Catlin’s life. Cole, ten years her junior, takes care of the former while her job disposing of roadkill addresses the latter.
When a cancer diagnosis makes her question her worth, suspecting the illness is payback for the deaths of her father and baby sister, she begins a challenging journey of healing and self-discovery. Encounters with animals, both living and dead, help her answer the question, who is worth saving?
I loved this book because it took me to places I found uncomfortable in a way I could manage.
I found the relationships challenging to accept but totally understandable, given the circumstances. The voices were clear and distinct. The way the story progressed allowed me to stay with and feel compassion for lives I would have otherwise judged.
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives.
As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing…
This author blows me away with her unflinching approach to sex and sexuality.
This exposes complex and rarely approached relationships in a fresh and startling way. The issue of pain transference isn’t something often dealt with in fiction.
I think I love this book because it’s unsettling and honest. I like a book that upends me and makes me consider life in ways I hadn’t before.
Again, I loved this book because it examines a young life from an unconventional point of view. How love and perceived romance can occur outside of acceptable cultural norms.
I love that music brings these people together. I love when a book makes me understand how what I might think is wrong or immoral is just another face of love and life.
A woman's lover from her youth resurfaces in her adult life, and she is drawn into the turmoil surrounding disturbing accusations about his Nazi past. From pre WWI Dresden, Germany to contemporary urban Toronto, the dual point of view narrative crosses continents and moves through time as it explores the ambiguity of human emotion, how our natures can embody both the ideals and delights of love alongside the most base and dispassionate sensibilities.
I loved the shadow world of this book. How it was hard to determine if the relationship was indeed toxic or if the lust and hunger pointed truly to a love affair. It was sexy and disturbing at the same time.
It’s the relationship that fascinated me. The blurry lines between sex and love. Between grooming and real caring. And that even as an adult, the character doesn’t really know, and isn’t able to clearly understand how she feels.
An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 DYLAN THOMAS AWARD
'A package of dynamite' Stephen King
'Powerful, compulsive, brilliant' Marian Keyes
An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher
ALL HE DID WAS FALL IN LOVE WITH ME AND THE WORLD TURNED HIM INTO A MONSTER
Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher.
She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student.…
I loved this book because it challenged ideas about relationships and motherhood.
For me, the issues around guilt and feelings of self-worth came through strongly. I loved this book because the writing was lyrical and clear, and made me suspend my disbelief to the point where I totally believed the premise that one could inhabit another’s body—and made me wonder if the burden of guilt can actually cause such dire consequences.
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2017
"[A] supernatural domestic thriller and a crackling tour de force." ―The New York Times
Thunderstorms are rolling across the summer sky. Every time one breaks, Rose Bowan loses consciousness and has vivid, realistic dreams about being in another woman's body.
Is Rose merely dreaming? Or is she, in fact, inhabiting a stranger? Disturbed yet entranced, she sets out to discover what is happening to her, leaving the cocoon of her family’s small repertory cinema for the larger, upended world of someone wildly different from…
My life and work have been profoundly affected by the central circumstance of my existence: I was born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America. As a child surrounded by many others in the 60s, I wrote, performed, and directed family plays with my numerous brothers and sisters. Although I fell in love with a Canadian and moved to Canada, my family of origin still exerts considerable personal influence. My central struggle, coming from that place of chaos, order, and conformity, is to have the courage to live an authentic life based on my own experience of connectedness and individuality, to speak and be heard.
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in the parish, Annie is tortured by her own dishonesty. But when “The Hands” visits her in her bed and when her sister finds herself facing a scandal, Annie discovers her parents will do almost anything to uphold their reputation and keep their secrets safe.
Questioning all she has believed and torn between her own gut instinct and years of Catholic guilt, Annie takes courageous risks to wrest salvation from the tragic sequence of events set in motion by her parents’ betrayal.
