Adult Onset

Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner's career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler's hands?

When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose's world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head.

With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.

“One of the finest novels I've read in a long, long time.”

Beautifully rendered... frank and acidly funny... It's a large-hearted, resonant novel, filled with an interiority that opens out - a generous work. - Guardian

Ann-Marie MacDonald captures the dark hilarity of parenthood like nobody else. I gulped down Adult Onset in a single day. - Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Definitely recommended. - Daily Mail

Sensitive and unmistakeably heartfelt. - Sunday Times

A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life. - Sarah Waters, author of The Paying Guests

Remarkable...an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale. - Chicago Tribune

She has again delivered a masterpiece. - The Globe and Mail

A lively, moving, and often funny story that has the potential to help usher in a new era of honest literary depictions of families in all their permutations. - The Walrus

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a bestselling, award-winning novelist, playwright, actor and broadcaster. She lives in Toronto with her partner and their two children.

Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner's career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler's hands?When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose's world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head. With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.

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