Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist. She was born in Montreal, but spent part of her childhood in the American South. She currently lives in Montreal with her partner, humorist and broadcaster Jonathan Goldstein.
Grey Dog (2024) Elliott Gish "Grey Dog is a bewitching tale of the horrors of spinsterhood in the early 1900s, with madness and magic threaded through every sentence. Elliott Gish transforms the multiple ways in which women were psychologically abused and viciously monitored into a gorgeous vision of folk horror, feral girl children, and wondrous monsters."
The Inheritance (2024) Joanna Goodman "Goodman's novel delves into the toxicity of inheritance and the way it can obsess and destroy one's sense of self and path in the world. She looks at the myriads of ways the women in the Bunt family hold themselves back, by focusing on appearance, by becoming love addicts, by denying abuse. Their struggle is cringey, complicated and a beautiful thing to behold. Goodman's women are impossible not to feel empathy and cheer for. An excellent, compulsively readable work."
How to Be Found (2023) Emily Pohl-Weary "In How to Be Found, teenagers dance on the precipitous line between childhood and adulthood, shocked by their conflicting desires for freedom and love. Emily Pohl-Weary celebrates the families that teens create for themselves and examines the value of bold, powerful, and transformative childhood friendships. This is a rich and inclusive portrait of modern adolescence and its rejection of the patriarchal idea of family."
And Then She Fell (2023) Alicia Elliott "And Then She Fell is shocking, riveting, uncomfortable, gorgeous and visionary.... Elliott's remarkable, genre-blurring, and brilliant writing takes us into a world of metaphor and myth and nature. Her world-building is as menacing and spectacular as that of Jeff VanderMeer and Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Elliott's true gift to the reader is a new perspective on Indigeneity which is both humbling and earth-shattering."
The Fake (2023) Zoe Whittall "Zoe Whittall has created her most extraordinary, complicated, and lovable characters yet. A beautiful, charismatic liar appears in the lives of vulnerable and grieving people, and her elaborate tales of woe weave everyone into her spell, with tragic results. My perspective on lies and liars has forever changed after reading this book."
Empty Theatre (2023) Jac Jemc "A brilliant, outrageous, page-turning social satire. The mad isolation and aesthetic bubble the royalty lives in become, through Jac Jemc's glorious retelling, something so darling and vulnerable and, at the same time, monstrously idiotic. Oh, reader, you will follow the tragic paths of these monarchs as they chase melodies and butterflies to their graves, and feel yourself to be so much richer and freer afterward."
Sharp Edges (2022) Leah Mol "Leah Mol's debut novel explores the burgeoning sexuality of teenaged Katie, and delves into what it feels like to live in the female body. In subtle and desperate and shocking ways, Katie explores the world of sex that is available to her. She allows herself to exist in the pornographic imagination and tries to locate her own physical desire in the bodies of boys and men. But ultimately Katie is searching for self-knowledge that will allow her to become a subject, a human being whose sexuality belongs to them. Sharp Edges is a treacherous, provocative and luminous novel about girlhood. Leah Mol is a brand new talent with a sly, devastating and remarkable eye for details of the female experience."
The Maid (2022) (Molly the Maid mystery, book 1) Nita Prose "For anyone who has ever felt out of step with the world, no matter how hard they try to fit it, Nita Prose has blessed us with Molly Gray."
All's Well (2021) Mona Awad "Tragic, macabre, and wicked. I laughed out loud the whole way through. One of the funniest books I’ve read in years."
The Listeners (2021) Jordan Tannahill "Tannahill has written an engaging, shocking and hilarious story about how a woman's search for deeper meaning leads to an entire town being in crisis. It is a testament to the revulsion and horror an ordinary person can inspire when they decide to simply peek outside of the box."
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016) Iain Reid "An addictive metaphysical investigation into the nature of identity, one which seduces and horrifies in equal measure. Reid masterfully explores the perversity of loneliness and somehow also creates a very entertaining thriller. I found myself yelling at the characters to put their feet on the pedal and drive."
