THE COMPANY WE KEEP

Six strangers in need of solace come back to life when they join a ‘Company of Good Cheer.'

Hazzley is at loose ends, even three years after the death of her husband. When her longtime friend, Cassandra, café owner and occasional dance-class partner, suggests that she start up a conversation group, Hazzley posts a notice on the community board at the local grocery store. Four people turn up for the first meeting: Gwen, a recently widowed retiree in her early 60s, who finds herself pet-sitting for a cantankerous parrot; Chiyo, a 40-year-old fitness instructor who cared for her unyielding but gossip-loving mother through the final days of her life; Addie, a woman pre-emptively grieving a close friend who is seriously ill; and Tom, antiques dealer and amateur poet who, having been deprived of home baking since becoming a widower, comes to the first meeting hoping cake will be served. Before long, they are joined by Allam, a Syrian refugee with his own story to tell.

These six strangers are learning that beginnings might be possible at any stage of life. But as they tell their stories, they must navigate what is shared and what is withheld. What version of the truth will be told? Who is prepared to step up when help is needed? Acclaimed author Frances Itani's moving, funny, and deeply empathic new novel reminds us that life, with all its twists and turns, never loses its capacity to surprise.

FRANCES ITANI's novels include That's My Baby; Tell, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Requiem, chosen by The Washington Post as one of the top fiction titles of 2012; Remembering the Bones, published internationally and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; and the #1 bestseller Deafening, which won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, was selected for CBC's Canada Reads, and was published in seventeen territories. Itani lives in Ottawa.