An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction
Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.
And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know.
With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free oneself from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.
And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know.
With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free oneself from the expectations of others. Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"A haunting tale of love, heartbreak, and deceit. In precise, lyrical prose, Bronwyn Fischer captures Natalie's growing pains in all their hilarity, devastation, and piercing tenderness. This is an electric debut." - Antonia Angress
"All-consuming. The Adult has it all: betrayal, the intensity of inexperienced queer infatuation, and a perceptive and comic voice. A bright and poignant coming-of-age story that will leave you thinking, 'I hope Bronwyn Fischer writes more!'" - Emily Austin
"[Reading The Adult], I enter a beautiful and beguiling world, in which Fischer's sentences do what the best writing does: alter my way of seeing. The novel offers a deeply embodied sense of being eighteen in a new place, even as the narrator longs simultaneously to step into a new self. The unexpected perils and complexities of her journey are rendered with utmost specificity, offered to the reader with verve, heartbreak and comedy. This is the debut of an utterly original new voice." - Catherine Bush
"This novel is that rare thing that combines profound feeling with the cool detachment and sharp insight of deep intelligence. A coming of age story, a school story, a coming out story, a morally dubious love story and a comic tragedy of modern manners, distractions and disastrous miscalculations, The Adult looks at moving to the city, finding love, finding sex, thinking you are older than you are, watching idiosyncratic videos on YouTube while having your heart broken, and getting out of your depth." - Kate Cayley
"Bronwyn Fischer's The Adult is a gorgeous daydream of a novel. In her immersive and lyrical prose, Fischer unravels a stunning portrait of a young woman's queer sexual awakening. A tender and sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age story, The Adult nevertheless shows us how profoundly we can grow when we move past shame and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to love and desire. I adore this book!" - Jennifer Savran Kelly
"Bronwyn Fisher's The Adult smolders with barely contained longing. Natalie's voice--restrained, lyric, and precise--transported me back to the exquisite desperation of first love. Fisher's debut novel is like a visit from your younger self--even as you worry about Natalie, you won't be able to look away." - Alyssa Songsiridej
"Brilliant, a true original." - Souvankham Thammavongsa
"All-consuming. The Adult has it all: betrayal, the intensity of inexperienced queer infatuation, and a perceptive and comic voice. A bright and poignant coming-of-age story that will leave you thinking, 'I hope Bronwyn Fischer writes more!'" - Emily Austin
"[Reading The Adult], I enter a beautiful and beguiling world, in which Fischer's sentences do what the best writing does: alter my way of seeing. The novel offers a deeply embodied sense of being eighteen in a new place, even as the narrator longs simultaneously to step into a new self. The unexpected perils and complexities of her journey are rendered with utmost specificity, offered to the reader with verve, heartbreak and comedy. This is the debut of an utterly original new voice." - Catherine Bush
"This novel is that rare thing that combines profound feeling with the cool detachment and sharp insight of deep intelligence. A coming of age story, a school story, a coming out story, a morally dubious love story and a comic tragedy of modern manners, distractions and disastrous miscalculations, The Adult looks at moving to the city, finding love, finding sex, thinking you are older than you are, watching idiosyncratic videos on YouTube while having your heart broken, and getting out of your depth." - Kate Cayley
"Bronwyn Fischer's The Adult is a gorgeous daydream of a novel. In her immersive and lyrical prose, Fischer unravels a stunning portrait of a young woman's queer sexual awakening. A tender and sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age story, The Adult nevertheless shows us how profoundly we can grow when we move past shame and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to love and desire. I adore this book!" - Jennifer Savran Kelly
"Bronwyn Fisher's The Adult smolders with barely contained longing. Natalie's voice--restrained, lyric, and precise--transported me back to the exquisite desperation of first love. Fisher's debut novel is like a visit from your younger self--even as you worry about Natalie, you won't be able to look away." - Alyssa Songsiridej
"Brilliant, a true original." - Souvankham Thammavongsa
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