SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITERS PRIZE

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022

49TH SHELF EDITOR’S PICK FOR SEPTEMBER 2022

A reclamation of female rage and a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman.

Frances is quiet and reclusive, so much so that her upstairs roommates sometimes forget she exists. Isolated in the basement, and on the brink of graduating from university, Frances herself starts to question the realities of her own existence. She can’t remember there being a lock on the door at the top of the basement stairs—and yet, when she turns the knob, the door won’t open. She can’t tell the difference between her childhood memories, which bloom like flowers in the dark basement, and her dreams. Worse still, she can’t ignore the very real tapping sound now coming—insistently, violently—threatening to break through her bedroom wall.

With the thematic considerations of Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson’s work, and in the style of Herta Muller and Daisy Johnson, Tear is both a horrifyingly deformed Bildungsroman and a bristling reclamation of female rage. Blurring the real and the imagined, this lyric debut novel unflinchingly engages with contemporary feminist issues and explores the detrimental effects of false narratives, gaslighting, and manipulation on young women.

Erica McKeen is a writer, organizer, and teacher. She completed her MA in English literature from Western University. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the Guernica Prize, and shortlisted for The Malahat Review Open Season Awards,and her stories have been published in filling Station, The Dalhousie Review, Long Con Magazine, and elsewhere. Born, raised, and educated in London Township Treaty Territory (otherwise known as London, Ontario), she now resides on Musqueam land in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is her first novel.

Erica McKeen's profile page

• Short-listed, Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize

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