THE STUDENT

In the tradition of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and reminiscent of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, Cary Fagan brings Miriam fully to life in masterful prose full of beauty and insight.

Part One. In the fall of 1957, Miriam Moscowitz is a serious and passionate young student of literature at the University of Toronto, an insightful reader of the new critics, of T.S. Eliot, of Beckett. And she is a dutiful if headstrong Jewish daughter, the apple of her father's eye, the worry of her mother (who leaves her books on ‘women's problems'). She studies hard, goes to college parties, works summers, dates a young Jewish man with a good job, worships the professors whose offices she visits in the hallowed quadrangle of beautiful, stately University College. Life seems to be going just as she wants it. Until she asks a professor to recommend her for the graduate program at the university and discovers that she's not welcome.
Everything changes for Miriam, who begins a reckless affair with an American student obsessed with the civil rights clashes in the south. When the young man abandons her to join the movement back home, Miriam gets on a bus to follow him, no longer sure of anything in her life.

Part Two. Sunday, August 1, 2005. Miriam is seventy years old. The family descends on her house in preparation for the marriage ceremony of her son Michael, one of the first gay marriages in the country. A retired professor and a grandmother, Miriam finds her life upended by the knowledge that her husband, a doctor several years younger, is having another affair. While trying to take care of her family as well as help a woman Muslim student, she faces anew the question of how to live.

CARY FAGAN has written several critically acclaimed books, including most recently, A Bird's Eye, finalize for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize; My Life Among the Apes, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Valentine's Fall, finalist for the Toronto Book Award. He has also written many popular books for children, for which he has won the Vicki Metcalf Award for Children's Literature and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award. Cary Fagan also writes novels and story collections for adults. He lives in Toronto with his two daughters.

More information about Cary Fagan can be found on his website: Caryfagan.com