Tear

WINNER OF THE 2023 KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE FOR LITERARY FICTION

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022

49TH STREET EDITOR'S PICK FOR SEPTEMBER 2022

A reclamation of
female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.

Frances is quiet and reclusive,
so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in
the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself
starts to question the realities of her own existence. She can't remember there
being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairs--and yet, when she
turns the knob, the door won't open. She can't tell the difference between her
childhood memories, which bloom like flowers in the dark basement, and her
dreams. Worse still, she can't ignore the very real tapping sound now
coming--insistently, violently--threatening to break through her bedroom wall.

With the thematic considerations of Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson's work, and in the style of Herta Müller and Daisy Johnson, Tear is both a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman and a bristling reclamation of female rage. Blurring the real and the imagined, this lyric debut novel unflinchingly engages with contemporary feminist issues and explores the detrimental effects of false narratives, gaslighting, and manipulation on young women.

Erica McKeen was born in London, Ontario. She studied at Western University, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the Guernica Prize, and shortlisted for The Malahat Review Open Season Awards. Her stories have been published in PRISM international, filling Station, The Dalhousie Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Tear is her first novel. Tear is her first novel, and has been awarded the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction, selected as a 49th Shelf Editor's Pick, and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2022.