I’ve always been deeply interested in how people connect to those around them—it is something I write about constantly. My first novel, So Much Love, was about how a community reacts to terrible loss and uncertainty, and my recent book of nonfiction, These Days Are Numbered, is about how my own community—and I—reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am always looking at how humans human, separately and especially together. That is one of the joys of narrative fiction for me—the way we can use it to examine our behaviour and interactions, and how we form relationships and communities. I hope these books enthrall you as much as they did me.
I wrote...
These Days Are Numbered: Diary of a High-Rise Lockdown
The diary of a woman longing for community in a crowded downtown in pandemic times, when casual intimacies are forbidden.
Novelist Rebecca Rosenblum lives in St. James Town, Toronto—the most densely populated square kilometre in all of Canada. When Covid-19 and lockdowns arrive, she’s cut off from colleagues, friends, and family, and not allowed to go near neighbours. Rebecca keeps a weird and worried diary online—a love letter both to the outside world that she misses, and the little world inside St. James Town that she can see from home. As Rebecca watches from inside her box in the sky, her diary entries mix an account of a tough time in a tough place with joyful goofiness and moments of unexpected compassion.
Next Year, For Sure is the story of a long-time couple, Kathryn and Chris, and how they navigate a new challenge when Chris develops an attraction to a woman named Emily.
Much discussed and celebrated when it was published in 2017 as a “polyamory book,” Peterson explores that topic with great nuance, humour, and love, but there’s a lot more going on here.
Every character in the novel is searching for connection and a way not to be lonely—far beyond one romantic partner or more than one, they are looking for meaningful relationships of many sorts with other human beings and I found that their journeys went to some unexpected and fascinating places.
In this moving and enormously entertaining debut novel, longtime romantic partners Kathryn and Chris experiment with an open relationship and reconsider everything they thought they knew about love.
After nine years together, Kathryn and Chris have the sort of relationship most would envy. They speak in the shorthand they have invented, complete one another’s sentences, and help each other through every daily and existential dilemma. But, as content as they are together, an enduring loneliness continues to haunt the dark corners of their relationship. When Chris tells Kathryn about his feelings for Emily, a vivacious young woman he sees often…
This comic young adult novel—about a Canadian transplant who moves to a big weird New York City school and finds himself just one friend, and then with that friend, is moved to challenge his fellow students to connect and care about their school, their classmates, and even themselves—is undeniably silly.
But it’s also a great illustration about the power of friendship and connection among a big group of formerly alienated individuals. And it’s a tonne of fun. I have a hard time reading aloud from this book because I laugh so hard I cannot breathe.
Paul arrives at Don Carey High, where students, teachers, and clocks all refuse to work, and, with his new friend Shel, finds the laziest most eccentric student in the school and enters him in a race for school president
This novel is a sometimes funny and sometimes grim depiction of what it is like to be extremely lonely, and what it takes to move from that loneliness into friendship.
It starts out as something pretty simple and goofy—a socially challenged young woman develops a crush on a singer in a local band and tries to pursue him, but that’s just a jumping-off point for Honeyman to show Eleanor Oliphant in all her prickly, strange, smart, hurting glory.
This book is a quick-witted slow burn and it takes a while for Eleanor to finally let her defenses down and allow people—both within the book and the readers—to see what she’s struggling with—but is it ever worth it to go on the journey with this fascinating character.
"Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" -Reese Witherspoon
No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of…
Yes, it’s a Victorian novel but it’s also the slenderest and sweetest one, by my lights.
Cast out from his narrow religious community by the acts of a dishonest friend, Silas Marner flees to a new village and resolves to live a life apart, money his only security. Then along comes a tiny child in need and Silas cannot help but help—even though this new challenge comes on the heels of a devastating robbery.
The man’s generosity has the effect of opening him up to the generosity of others until, little by little, he becomes a part of the community he has lived apart from for so long. There is never a bad time to read this lovely, hopeful little novella about the worst and best of human nature.
Gold! - his own gold - brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!
Falsely accused of theft, Silas Marner is cut off from his community but finds refuge in the village of Raveloe, where he is eyed with distant suspicion. Like a spider from a fairy-tale, Silas fills fifteen monotonous years with weaving and accumulating gold. The son of the wealthy local Squire, Godfrey Cass also seeks an escape from his past. One snowy winter, two events change the course of their lives: Silas's gold is stolen and, a child crawls across his threshold.
There are so many things to love about this extremely beloved YA adventure novel about a futuristic world where a pandemic has ravaged most people’s ability to dream…except for Indigenous people, who are hunted for their bone marrow, which is believed to contain their dreaming ability.
It’s a haunting, exciting, eerie, and important book, but of the many things it underlines is the importance of found family, of learning to trust and find solace and protection and strength from the people we choose to be with. A beautiful lesson in a book full of good ones.
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden-but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse to share. And while the animals may not have Frankie’s exalted human brain, they know things she doesn’t, like what happened before she was adopted.
To prove she’s sane, Frankie investigates her forgotten past and conducts clandestine experiments. But just when she uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she’s fallen in love with—or give up her last chance at success and everything she thought she knew.
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain,…
Interested in
New York State,
isolation,
and
child abandonment?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
New York State,
isolation,
and
child abandonment.
