Watching You Without Me

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."

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.

PRAISE FOR LYNN COADY AND HELLGOINGWinner, Scotiabank Giller PrizeFinalist, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction PrizeA Globe and Mail Top 10 BookAn 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

PRAISE FOR LYNN COADY AND THE ANTAGONISTWinner, Georges Bugnet Award for FictionFinalist, Scotiabank Giller PrizeA Globe and Mail Top 100 BookA Toronto Star Top 100 BookAn Amazon.ca Best Book: Canadian FictionAn 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

LYNN COADY is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six books, including Hellgoing, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was an Amazon.ca and Globe and Mail Best Book. She is also the author of The Antagonist, winner of the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel, Strange Heaven, published when she was just twenty-eight, was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. Her books have been published in the U.K., U.S., Holland, France, and Germany. Coady lives in Toronto and writes for television.