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.

Reviews

“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.

“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

“[A] terrific read. The story is funny and sorrowful and trenchant and rich, packed and paced with unexpected, believable incidents… told with wry, crisp intelligence.”

– Joan Sullivan, The Telegram

From $17.99