ELLEN IN PIECES

An emotional mirror for all our lives, this novel explores love in its varied forms, the nature of regret and the possibility of recovery from it, and that greatest human test, mortality. A book for fans of Elizabeth Stout's Olive Kitteridge, Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Ellen McGinty is funny, impulsive, sexy, and chock full of regrets. In her forties, with her two daughters single-handedly raised, she sells the house she settled for in her long ago divorce and sets out to rediscover the artistic life abandoned in her youth. In Caroline Adderson's exquisitely written and affecting new novel, Ellen in Pieces, we meet the people Ellen loves, and watch as she manages, despite frequently messing up, to help shape their fates into something beautiful. Her younger daughter Yolanda, for example, who discovers she's pregnant after a chance encounter, and who seems to be repeating Ellen's past mistakes. Ellen's estranged father, whose surprise visit opens the wound of her marriage, which dissolved at her father's birthday party more than two decades before. And her complicated friend and fellow traveller Celine, out of loyalty to whom Ellen gives up the chance to discover whether the French man they met on a recent walking trip is, finally, her perfect match. Then, as she settles into middle age, Ellen finally slips the shell of her old life and steps out for a first, tentative foray into real contentment - directly into the path of two great loves: a dog bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anton Chekhov, and Matt, a man twenty years her junior. Ellen in Pieces then explodes into multiple points of view. Through the eyes of her lover Matt; her ex-husband Larry, who seems to be insinuating himself back into Ellen's life; her older daughter, Mimi, a former addict who decides to walk across the country, back to Ellen; her doting, eight year-old grandson; and her friend Georgia, who both supports and betrays her, we see the effect this one ordinary and extraordinary woman has on the people who are part of her tumultuous life. CAROLINE ADDERSON, a noted star in the Canadian literary firmament, is the author of three previous novels (A History of Forgetting, Sitting Practice, The Sky Is Falling), two collections of short stories (Bad Imaginings, Pleased To Meet You), as well as several critically acclaimed books for young readers. Her work has received numerous prize nominations including the the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers' Prizes, the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist, the Governor General's Literary Award and the Rogers' Trust Fiction Prize. The winner of two Ethel Wilson Fiction Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and several magazine awards, Caroline was also the recipient of the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She lives in Vancouver.