Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies

WATCHING YOU WITHOUT ME

Lynn Coady

Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author Lynn Coady delivers a creepy and wholly compelling novel about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters and sisters, women and men, and who to trust and how to trust in a world where the supposedly selfless act of caregiving can camouflage a sinister self-interest.

After her mother’s sudden death, Karen finds herself back in her childhood home in Nova Scotia for the first time in a decade, acting as full-time caregiver to Kelli, her older sister. Overwhelmed with grief and the daily needs of Kelli, who was born with a developmental disability, Karen begins to feel consumed by the isolation of her new role. On top of that, she’s weighed down with guilt over her years spent keeping Kelli and their independent-to-a-fault mother, Irene, at arm’s length. And so when Trevor — one of Kelli’s support workers — oversteps his role and offers friendly advice and a shoulder to cry on, Karen gratefully accepts his somewhat overbearing friendship. When she discovers how close Trevor was to Irene, she comes to trust him all the more. But as Trevor slowly insinuates himself into Karen and Kelli’s lives, Karen starts to grasp the true aspect of his relationship with her mother — and to experience for herself the suffocating nature of Trevor’s “care.”

Lynn Coady is the author of six books of fiction, including the a Giller Prize winning collection of stories. She lives in Toronto where she writes for television including, recently, the series Orphan Black. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Electric Literature, and The Walrus among other publications.

Available products
Book Published 2019-09-01 by Anansi
Book Published 2019-10-01 by Anansi

Comments

"Watching You Without Me is like a Lorrie Moore book suffering a Patricia Highsmith fever dream. You slide right along on Coady's witty and endearing style, and meanwhile the trap door has closed over you without your ever standing a chance."
–Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

"A suspenseful, deeply creepy page-turner and a beautifully subtle character study of a grieving woman slowly unravelling while trying to understand how to care for her sister, and herself, in an ableist world. Another masterpiece from the singular Lynn Coady.” — Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People

“With Watching You Without Me, Coady showcases just how smooth her writing is . . . Expertly rendered characters, easy reading plot, and excellent pacing.” — Quill & Quire

“Thank God for Lynn Coady’s singular voice and deliciously skewed world view. Every book of hers is an occasion to celebrate!” — Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking

Canadian author Coady’s unsettling tale of a clingy family caregiver (after the collection Hellgoing) explores a woman’s grief over the death of her mother and her struggle to take care of her intellectually disabled sister. Karen Petrie, a 40-something lawyer, returns to Nova Scotia from Toronto after her mother, Irene, dies from cancer, to settle her older sister, Kelli, into the care facility Irene had chosen for her. At the urging of Kelli’s caregiver, Trevor, who Kelli is always overjoyed to see, Karen hesitates at finalizing Kelli’s move. Trevor possesses his own key to the house and makes unscheduled visits, leading Karen to believe his claims that he was close to their mother, while Karen decides to take care of Kelli until a bed opens in another facility. When social services calls Karen to follow up on an anonymous tip about Kelli’s well-being, Karen leans more on Trevor, ignoring red flags, such as a creeping sense that Trevor had briefly kidnapped Karen and Kelli after a tour of another facility, until his behavior becomes alarming. Karen’s sardonic, retrospective narration highlights how her grief clouded her judgment of Trevor, and Coady impresses with her careful, humane characterization of Kelli. This stands out for its incisive, bleakly humorous look at gullibility and the complexities of guilt. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Company. (July)
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Winner, Scotiabank Giller Prize
Finalist, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
A Globe and Mail Top 10 Book
An Amazon.ca Best Book: Editors’ Pick

“Lynn Coady is one of the most dynamic prose stylists in Canadian letters.” — The Walrus

“A superb collection, end to end, and easily one of the best books I’ve read so far in 2013.” — Edmonton Journal

“Coady is a writer who increasingly commands attention and respect.” — Globe and Mail

“Coady’s sharp sense of humour serves to humanize even the most vicious or clueless figures in the book. There is searing honesty here about humankind’s inability, or unwillingness, to make an effort at connection, but the author’s own humanity rescues her vision from descending into despair or nihilism.” — National Post

“A brilliant collection of stories.” — Winnipeg Free Press

A Quill & Quire Book of the Year

“Coady has her storytelling chops on full display here.” — Hamilton Review of Books

“A taut, intense story about love and manipulation from one of Canada’s best writers.” — Now Magazine

“[Lynn Coady’s] readers will be accustomed to the violent, addicted, narcissistic men in her past work and find fresh and unnerving explorations of the subject in Watching You Without Me.” — Atlantic Books Today

“An enticing and propulsive two-bodies-on-a-collision-course plot . . . Coady has a surgical hand with the mechanics of suspense.” — Toronto Star

“Moments of genuinely unnerving violence and aggression . . . What works so well in Coady’s new novel is not so much the moments when she tightens the narrative screws, but rather when she lingers on the warped material they are being screwed into.” — Globe and Mail

“With Watching You Without Me, Coady showcases just how smooth her writing is . . . Expertly rendered characters, easy reading plot, and excellent pacing.” — Quill & Quire

“Watching You Without Me is both a suspenseful, deeply creepy page-turner and a beautifully subtle character study of a grieving woman slowly unravelling while trying to understand how to care for her sister, and herself, in an ableist world. Another masterpiece from the singular Lynn Coady.” — Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People

“Watching You Without Me is like a Lorrie Moore book suffering a Patricia Highsmith fever dream. You slide right along on Coady’s witty and endearing style, and meanwhile the trap has closed over you without your ever standing a chance.” — Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and Dissident Gardens

“Thank God for Lynn Coady’s singular voice and deliciously skewed worldview. Every book of hers is an occasion to celebrate!” — Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking

“A terrific, thoughtful, insightful novel.” — Linwood Barclay (via @linwood_barclay), author of Elevator Pitch

“Deeply felt and deeply scary.” — Marina Endicott (via @marinaendicott), author of Good to a Fault

A thoughtful and intense drama about how insidiously family ties can be exploited.

Winner, Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction
Finalist, Scotiabank Giller Prize
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book
A Toronto Star Top 100 Book
An Amazon.ca Best Book: Canadian Fiction
An Amazon.ca Best Book: Editors’ Pick

“Dear Lynn Coady: As I said, I love your new book, with its unsettling mixture of comedy and pathos . . . Incredibly funny, sarcastic and profane, right up till the moment when the tragedy below the surface suddenly erupts . . . It’s an extraordinarily clever and sympathetic exploration of the cross-currents of male friendship, the intense relationships we make and abandon in school. How ill-fitting those intimacies feel years later whenever a college reunion or some chance encounter forces us to try them on again.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post

“A full-bodied work of fiction . . . Coady’s previous books have received much praise and it’s easy to see why, given all the gifts of storytelling on display here. A fine novel.” — Globe and Mail

“Only a writer as wonderfully gifted as Lynn Coady could elicit such extraordinary sympathy for a man as full of self-destructive rage as Rank, her main character. You won’t soon forget either him or this haunting novel.” — Richard Russo

“Coady’s fluency in the language of the college boy [is] impressive, [as is] her feel for the camaraderie that is inseparable from rivalry and masculine aggression.” — The New Yorker

“Wildly enthralling, compelling . . . A bravura novel, tightly controlled . . . a readable, quixotic coming-of-age story, a comedy of very bad manners, and a thoughtful inquiry into the very nature of self. It’s the sort of novel — and Coady the sort of writer — deserving of every accolade coming to it.” — National Post

“A wicked page-turner . . . Brilliantly moves between the harrowing and the hilarious . . . Truly confirms Coady as a comic genius . . . and one of the best Canadian writers.” — Winnipeg Free Press

“Thank God for Lynn Coady’s singular voice and deliciously skewed worldview. Every book of hers is an occasion to celebrate!”
—Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking

“Expertly rendered characters, easy reading plot, and excellent pacing . . . With Watching You Without Me, Coady showcases just how smooth her writing is . . . We’ve come to expect a certain level of excellence from Lynn Coady. Watching You Without Me lives up to this expectation.”
—Dory Cerny, Quill and Quire

“Watching You Without Me is both a suspenseful, deeply creepy page-turner and a beautifully subtle character study of a grieving woman slowly unravelling while trying to understand how to care for her sister, and herself, in an ableist world. Another masterpiece from the singular Lynn Coady.”
—Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People

“Emotionally complex, with the twists of a chilling thriller, Coady's novel explores mother-daughter and male-female relationships, what it means to be a family, the rewards of selflessness versus selfishness, and the human need not to be alone.”
—Mary Ellen Prindiville, Booklist

“Coady’s unsettling tale of a clingy family caregiver explores a woman’s grief over the death of her mother and her struggle to take care of her intellectually disabled sister . . . Coady impresses with her careful, humane characterization . . . [Watching You Without Me] stands out for its incisive, bleakly humorous look at gullibility and the complexities of guilt.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A woman returns to her childhood home to settle her late mother's affairs . . . A thoughtful and intense drama about how insidiously family ties can be exploited."
—Kirkus

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-65843-6