Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy’s critically acclaimed six novels and widely anthologized short stories have been published in twenty-four countries and have appeared on best-seller lists throughout the world. She has been a finalist three times for the Governor General’s Award and the Roger’s Trust Fiction Prize, twice for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. She is a Trillium Book Award winner, a Member of the Order of Canada, and a Guggenheim Fellow.  Ben Marcus, Harper’s Magazine,  named her as one of the few “terrific” literary realists who have “pounded on the emotional possibilities of their mode, refusing to subscribe to worn-out techniques and story-telling methods.”

Praise

  • At once suspenseful and lyrical, Little Sister transports its characters (and its readers) into different bodies and different eras. Brilliantly, devastatingly, Barbara Gowdy unveils the alternate possibilities hidden within the everyday.

    —Helen Phillips, author of THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT

  • Barbara Gowdy fills me with wonder. It is impossible to categorize her marvelous work, which is the highest compliment I can think of. Little Sister is no exception: a sui generis novel that offers all the excitements of a mystery while also exploring the strange workings of desire, empathy, identity, and memory. I won’t sit through another thunderstorm without remembering this book and its generous surprises.

    —Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, author of MS. HEMPEL CHRONICLES

  • Little Sister is weird and wonderful. Like all of Gowdy’s work, it will subtly change how you look at the everyday.

    —Ayelet Waldman, author of LOVE AND TREASURE