WINNER OF THE 2023 KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE FOR LITERARY FICTION
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022
49TH STREET EDITOR'S PICK FOR SEPTEMBER 2022
A reclamation of
female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.
Frances is quiet and reclusive,
so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in
the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself
starts to question the realities of her own existence. She can’t remember there
being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairs—and yet, when she
turns the knob, the door won’t open. She can’t tell the difference between her
childhood memories, which bloom like flowers in the dark basement, and her
dreams. Worse still, she can’t ignore the very real tapping sound now
coming—insistently, violently—threatening to break through her bedroom wall.
With the thematic considerations of Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson’s work, and in the style of Herta Müller and Daisy Johnson, Tear is both a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman and a bristling reclamation of female rage. Blurring the real and the imagined, this lyric debut novel unflinchingly engages with contemporary feminist issues and explores the detrimental effects of false narratives, gaslighting, and manipulation on young women.
A reclamation of
female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.
Frances is quiet and reclusive,
so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in
the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself
starts to question the realities of her own existence. She can't remember there
being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairs—and yet, when she
turns the knob, the door won't open. She can't tell the difference between her
childhood memories, which bloom like flowers in the dark basement, and her
dreams. Worse still, she can't ignore the very real tapping sound now
coming—insistently, violently—threatening to break through her bedroom wall.
With the thematic
considerations of Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson's work, and in the style of
Herta Müller and Daisy Johnson, Tear
is both a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman and a bristling reclamation of
female rage. Blurring the real and the imagined, this lyric debut novel
unflinchingly engages with contemporary feminist issues and explores the
detrimental effects of false narratives, gaslighting, and manipulation on young
women.
"Clarice Lispector meets Daphne du Maurier in Erica McKeen's beautiful, surreal debut. One of the novel's brilliant inventions is a dire space, just off to one side of consciousness, where bodies and minds dissolve and gather new form, where loneliness is so real it comes alive. With animistic, lugubrious prose, McKeen pulls the reader into the visionary emptiness of Frances James’s alienation, toward a magnificent, exhilarating study of reality and self. Like a ghost haunting her own life, Frances shocked me with her uncanniness and moved me with her need. Here, distortions are as exquisite as they are grotesque. This is triumphant terror."—Seyward Goodhand, author of Even That Wildest Hope
