Happy book birthday to Aftershock by Alison Taylor, out today from HarperCollins Canada!
“Alison Taylor’s debut novel is a riveting exploration of two tough women, a mother and a daughter, on a separate but similar journey, to figure out who they want to be and how to love each other again.” –– Zoe Whittall, author of Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist The Best Kind of People
Nightmares still haunt Chloe thirteen years after she lost her baby sister. Her mother, Jules, with a busy tech career and long history of chronic pain, has little time for Chloe. After Chloe drops out of university to travel for a year, Jules’s OxyContin dependency quickly becomes a problem. Aftershock follows their parallel journeys: Jules struggles to regain control of her life and come to terms with the emotional pain that has so long manifested itself in her body. Chloe, after a rocky visit with her estranged father in New Zealand, resolves to go off the map, hoping that doing so will help her to understand her place in the world. When Jules suddenly can’t find her daughter, the feeling is all too familiar. Mother and daughter will need to reconcile before they can finally address the secrets surrounding the tragic death of a sister and the emotional impact they have wrought.
Alison Taylor was fired from jobs as a babysitter, a chambermaid, a barista and a farm hand, before
spending twenty years as a television editor in Toronto, Ontario. They have previously published in Exile Literary Quarterly and Broken Pencil Magazine, performed deadpan stand-up on various comedy stages and made several internationally screened experimental short films. They now live in Fredericton, New Brunswick with their partner and two bossy felines. Aftershock is their first novel. Alison is represented by Samantha Haywood.