These Songs I Know By Heart by Erin Brubacher
These Songs I Know By Heart by Erin Brubacher
PRE-ORDER
Literary Fiction
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
204 pages
5.25 x 8 inches
Paperback
ISBN 9781771669009
|
Trade Paperback $23.00 (Pre-order) |
Married and divorced in her 20s, looking for friendship in her 30s, and contemplating pregnancy at 40, our narrator wonders if she’s going through life out of order. But Alice, The Turtle, The Kid, and other beloveds show her that motherhood is more than giving birth, art is never finished, and love is not linear.
Through a three-day canoe trip, chance encounters, fierce female friendship, step-parenting, IVF, pandemic isolation, and quiet moments between humans, These Songs I Know By Heart weaves vignettes of everyday mythology into an absorbing and honest meditation on the connections in our lives. With razor-sharp reflection, humour, and most of all love, we are reminded that there’s no formula to life and that instead, we must celebrate what makes the small moments of our lives extraordinary.
Praise for These Songs I Know By Heart
“Erin Brubacher’s gorgeous new book is a collection of stylish, original and artfully observed sketches of 21st century romance and modern friendship, and her optimism about the tiny beautiful connections we make in life is happy-making. These Songs I Know By Heart is an odd, winsome, and winning piece of writing.” —Hannah Moscovitch, Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author of Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes
“One of the quietly radical things about These Songs I Know By Heart is the essential goodness of its characters. No forced conflict, no traditional antagonist, no plumbing the fundamental ugliness of its protagonist. What emerges is something more rare and profound: a deeply humane and compassionate compendium of encounter and observation meditating on friendship, motherhood, art making, and home.” —Jordan Tannahill, Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted author of The Listeners
“A thoughtful, searching novel about connection and love in all its many forms, from fleeting encounters with strangers to bonds with chosen kin. There is a deep generosity in these reflections on art and friendship, uncertainty and loss, and a beautiful openness to the world. This book left me feeling less alone.” —Aimee Wall, author of We, Jane
“These Songs I Know By Heart is like time spent with a good friend—candid, comforting, and inspiring. Erin Brubacher’s spare prose elides the distance between feelings and words, and her sensitive songs are tuned to an artist’s pitch.” —Martha Schabas, author of My Face in the Light
Press Coverage:
Most Anticipated: Our 2024 Spring Fiction Preview —49th Shelf
About the Author
ERIN BRUBACHER is a multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of the poetry collection In the small hours: Thirty-nine months & seven days and co-author of the hybrid, performance-based book 7th Cousins: An Automythography. Her award-winning work in theatre has taken her to contexts including the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), Theater der Welt (Germany), and the Edinburgh International Festival (UK). She is driven by the desire to make meeting places: for her, art is a framework that serves to gather people who might not otherwise be in a literal or figurative room together. Erin lived in ten cities before returning to Toronto, where she makes a home with her husband and four children.
