Sceptre
Sceptre
Sceptre
Heartbreaking new novel from the internationally bestselling author of Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies
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.
Beautifully rendered... frank and acidly funny... It's a large-hearted, resonant novel, filled with an interiority that opens out - a generous work. - Guardian
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
Definitely recommended. - Daily Mail
Sensitive and unmistakeably heartfelt. - Sunday Times
A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life. - Sarah Waters, author of The Paying Guests
Remarkable...an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale. - Chicago Tribune
She has again delivered a masterpiece. - The Globe and Mail
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. - The Walrus