Imagine a new life. Maxine Carter suddenly finds herself searching for a fresh start—a way around her own gnawing fear of an untimely death and a wasted life. What she discovers is her neighbour’s nine-year-old son, Kyle. As Maxine becomes the boy’s constant companion and as Kyle deals with his parents’ increasing absence and with life as an outsider in a new city, he slowly manages to reinvent Maxine’s real and imaginative life. Smart, funny, and poignant, Claire Wilkshire’s impressive debut is a novel about overcoming personal fears in a world wracked by private loss and public anxiety, and about finding friendship in the most unlikely places.

Author bio   Claire Wilkshire is a writer, editor, translator and teacher living in St. John’s with her husband, writer Larry Mathews. They have two adult children. Maxine (2013) is Claire’s first novel. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Grain, the New Quarterly, Event, and the Fiddlehead. She’s a founding member of the Burning Rock writing group.

Claire Wilkshire's profile page

Here is a new kind of hero. Noble, funny, cautious, Maxine travels the same road as the rest of us, but in the opposite direction. You may just pull a U-turn and follow her. Wilkshire has written the book we’ve been longing for: a coming of age story, in reverse. Inspiring and triumphant.

Jessica Grant, author of Come, Thou Tortoise

Book lovers will enjoy Maxine, an original and witty story about how a novel is lived as it is being written. Claire Wilkshire's writing is unpretentious, ironic, clever and a pleasure to read.

Joan Clark, author of Latitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs