Michelle Berry

On September 11, 2001, the world changed. For Sophie and Paul, it started with a disastrous dinner party. For the babysitter, it started with waking in a dark kitchen and recognizing the smell of blood. For everyone else it started with a plane flying into the World Trade Center. In this tautly written domestic thriller set in Toronto, Michelle Berry weaves together the story of two couples whose lives are about to be unravelled by the murder of a neighbour, a babysitter that has gone missing and the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center. It is a haunting exploration of marriages and what tears them apart, of what happens to people during shocking events and of how everything can change in an instant. Filled with richly drawn characters, a web of thwarted desires and multiple motives, Everything Turns Away is riveting until the very end.

Everything Turns Away

From fall to spring, the inhabitants of Edgewood Drive in the small town of Parkville prove that the simplest lives can be intricate and complicated. The interwoven, layered narrative of Michelle Berry's Interference moves between Senior Ladies Leisure League hockey, the unsure and awkward life of pre-teens and teens, suspected pedophilia, disfigurement, and cancer. In Interference, there is always someone watching, biding their time -- and as this suspense builds the vivaciousness of a congenial neighbourhood, full of life and happiness as well as fear and sorrow, becomes at once more humorous, frightening, and real.

A Novel

Interference

“An immaculately constructed page-turner that is also, miraculously, a redemptive meditation on loneliness and community” (Carrie Snyder, author of Girl Runner). The inhabitants of Edgewood Drive in the small Canadian town of Parkville seem to live simple, peaceful lives, but as the children attend elementary school and the senior ladies play Leisure League hockey, secrets and hardships and menaces lurk not far from the surface. This suspenseful novel takes us into a community and reveals the life and happiness—as well as the fear and sorrow—of those who call it home. “Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it’s also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters’ lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down.” —Rebecca Godfrey, author of Under the Bridge “Interference is tightly plotted and neatly executed, very nearly perfectly paced, and satisfyingly complex—but it is also escapism in its purest form, and a sheer delight to read.” —The Winnipeg Review

Winner of the Colophon Prize Longlisted for the ReLit award

This Book Will Not Save Your Life

What if prison was the only world you knew, and everything else was just a story? The Prisoner and the Chaplain is about two men awaiting an execution. As the hours drain away, the prisoner tells his story to the chaplain. Is it an off-the-cuff confession or a last bid for salvation? As the chaplain listens, he realises a life has many stories, and the prisoner has been many people. But the chaplain has his own story to tell, and now he must tell it to someone who will never be able to repeat it. Each man is guilty in his own way, and their stories have led them to the same room, a room that only one of them will leave. If you had only twelve hours left to live, what would you have to say?

Michelle Berry

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