Award-winning poet David O’Meara captures one family’s precarious balance between misery and hope in his debut novel.

Twenty-year-old Georgia is reeling from severe depression after the death of her best friend when she arrives in South Korea. Everyone teaching English is there for one of two reasons—adventure or escape—and she quickly falls in with a group of other foreigners. She eases into a life of late-night bars, riotous student protests and surfing until some unexpected news forces her to face the problems she has left behind.

Hugo Walser is bound for Barcelona to publicly confront the man he’s convinced is presenting a keynote speech about Hugo’s controversial failure as an architect. Determined to drink away his pain until the big event, Hugo rambles through the city, distracted by thoughts of how he’s failed his family. When the police call to investigate the disappearance of his ex-wife, Sarah Trimble, Hugo turns his attention to all he stands to lose.

Meanwhile, Sarah, a high-end real estate agent, has been duped out of her life savings by a con man. En route to sell her last asset, the neglected family cottage in Gatineau, she’s derailed when her car is caught in a flash flood. Alone and desperate, she seizes one last chance to right a wrong.

Following a modern family’s dysfunction, Chandelier is a three-part portrait of a young adult and her divorced parents as they navigate profound loss and disappointment and the crux between despair and optimism.

David O’Meara is the award-winning author of five collections of poetry, most recently Masses on Radar (Coach House Books). His books have been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Award, the Trillium Book Award and the K.M. Hunter Award, and have won the Archibald Lampman Award four times. His poetry has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, quoted in a Tragically Hip song and used as libretto for a pastoral cantata for unaccompanied chorus, written by composer Scott Tresham. He is the director of the Plan 99 Reading Series and he was the founding Artistic Director for the VERSeFest Poetry Festival. He lives in Ottawa.

David O’Meara's profile page

“Chandelier pulls you into the world of a family who’s often unable to understand each other. It explores the frequent failures in human connection, but despite the difficulties, our attempts to try. O’Meara’s prose is evocative and poignant, and his storytelling compelling. A striking book that will linger long after it’s finished.”

Menaka Raman-Wilms, author of <em>The Rooftop Garden</em>