A novel about Charlie, neurodivergent, preoccupied with numbers, and desperately trying to solve for love.

Growing up on an isolated farm, Charlie is clearly different. He can never make sense of what anyone else is thinking or feeling, and finds solace in the infinitely fascinating world of numbers.

Many years later Charlie sees a phone number pop up on his call display for the first time in ten years, belonging to a woman he assumed dead. On the verge of another breakdown, he searches the streets of Montreal for a lost love—forced to face a past that he had desperately tried to forget.

With magnetic prose that positively vibrates with energy, Bernice Friesen brilliantly takes us into the mind of a captivating, unforgettable character. Universal Disorder is an extraordinary novel about the human psyche and the imperfect, disordered ways that we love each other.

Bernice Friesen is a writer and visual artist whose poetry and fiction have been published in numerous periodicals, such as Grain, CV2, Prairie Fire and the Capilano Review. Coteau published her poetry collection Sex, Death and Naked Men in 1998. The title story of her book, The Seasons are Horses, won the Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in Canada. Bernice Friesen was born in Rosthern, Saskatchewan, and now divides her time between Saskatoon and Hornby Island in BC.

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