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‘Ann-Marie MacDonald captures the dark hilarity of parenthood like nobody else. I gulped down Adult Onset in a single day.’ EMMA DONOGHUE, author of ROOM
‘A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life.’ – SARAH WATERS
Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner’s career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler’s hands?
When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose’s world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head.
With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.
‘A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life.’ – SARAH WATERS
Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner’s career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler’s hands?
When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose’s world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head.
With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.
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Reviews
A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life.
Ann-Marie MacDonald captures the dark hilarity of parenthood like nobody else. I gulped down Adult Onset in a single day.
...explores the question of parental abuse and its origins with uncommon courage.
She has again delivered a masterpiece.
A lively, moving, and often funny story that has the potential to help usher in a new era of honest literary depictions of families in all their permutations.
. . . a novel impossible to put down once begun. . . . the novel is superb, a fine blending of fact and fiction, of remembered incident and forgotten history, a wonderfully written treatise on the power of the past to impinge on the present.
. . . an intricate, gripping novel that is also a master class in turning the personal into the universal through art.
Many of us will see ourselves in the profound discomfort MacDonald has conjured... the book is an absolute triumph of terrifying authenticity.
Suspense builds; surely, horror awaits. . . . Macdonald's book remains spellbinding throughout. It is impossible to forget.
Remarkable...an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale.
[MacDonald's] prose...is always right and true, clean and penetrating.
One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time.
MacDonald is a stunningly good writer . . . The Way the Crow Flies . . . secures for MacDonald a place, forever, in Canadian literature.
Beautifully rendered... frank and acidly funny... It's a large-hearted, resonant novel, filled with an interiority that opens out - a generous work.
Sensitive and unmistakeably heartfelt
Definitely recommended
Ms. MacDonald strikes just the right tone as she exposes the brutal undercurrents of domestic life.
Big, troubling and brave.
Macdonald is excellent at conversation - the phonecalls between Mary Rose and her mother are superb in their accuracy