This brilliant, genre-defying novel, like its main character, cannot be aptly described. Gertrude Unmanageable, one hundred and three years old (or thereabouts), arrives at Serenity, a geriatric facility in a town called Promise. From there, the novel wonders about love and reproduction as two distinct forms of life intersect, and Gertrude finds poignant pleasure in the unmanageable she insists she carry.

Educator, activist, editor, and writer, Deborah Schnitzer is the author of the novel, Gertrude Unmanageable, the long poem, Loving Gertrude Stein, as well as scholarly works and critical anthologies equally devoted to the unexpected. Her latest book, An Unexpected Break in the Weather, won the 2010 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. Schnitzer is a 3M Teaching Fellow in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg.

Deborah Schnitzer's profile page

Reading Gertude Unmanageable is like watching an episode of Star Trek written by an author who has had the protective sheath removed from her nerve endings.--Ron Robinson, Winnipeg Free Press

Gertrude Unmanageable is an odd duck. And so is Gertrude Unmanageable herself, the eponymous heroine of Deborah Schnitzer's debut novel. Though it confuses and frustrates at moments, Gertrude is ultimately a heartwarming glimpse into the interior lives of characters plunged into an unanticipated and otherworldly situation.--Shawn Syms, in Prairie Fire Review of Books