A Bit Much

For fans of Mona Awad and Sally Rooney, A Bit Much is a darkly funny novel about the complexity of friendships, the agony of insecurity, and the beautiful and embarrassing nature of loving someone. Alice is twenty-four and having a breakdown. She's lost her job, her appetite, her ability to sleep. And now she's worried she's going to lose Mia, her closest friend who's being treated for a serious illness. On the days Alice can get herself out of bed, she visits Mia at the hospital. While they fall into familiar patterns--Alice makes Mia laugh, Mia tells Alice she needs to get laid--they know their friendship is changing, and they know they can't control what will happen in the days ahead. Still focused on Mia, while trying to convince others she's a stable, happy woman, Alice meets her neighbour, James--someone she used to cross the street to avoid. They're interested in each other, but Alice, who is a lethal combination of judgemental and insecure, is hesitant; she has never had luck with dating, and she thinks now is a weird time since Mia needs her. And she figures he probably sucks anyway. Mia encourages Alice to keep moving, to go out, to work, while Mia attempts to hide her loneliness and fear as her body breaks down. But as Alice tries to push herself to do more, including allowing herself to get close to James, she struggles to move forward knowing Mia can't. A Bit Much is an intimate look at female friendships, new relationships, and the disorienting times in which we live. Brilliantly caustic and strangely funny, it introduces Sarah Jackson as a fascinating new voice in Canadian literature.