This spellbinding collection of eleven stories chronicles the remarkable journey of one woman’s life from childhood to adulthood, through exotic landscapes, and through the darker, more mysterious terrain of the human heart. The title story inhabits a child’s private realm within the maze of corridors in a Brazilian hotel. Later, a toy gun from a cowgirl costume becomes the symbol of something all too real. In a cramped apartment in Sweden, a young wife finds herself caught in the tensions between her husband and his father. A wife slips the bonds of marriage on a beach in Mexico. In a desert canyon on the island of Kauai, a woman at middle age discovers just how much she is willing to risk. And, in the haunting final story, the death of a parent unlocks the grief of a child’s tragic death years before. Dazzling, evocative, daring, The Lion in the Room Next Door is an exquisitely crafted work of the imagination.

Merilyn Simonds is the author of twelve books ranging from internationally acclaimed literary fiction to bestselling practical nonfiction. Her work of creative nonfiction, The Convict Lover, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award; her most recent novel, The Holding, was a New York Times Editors' Choice selection. She lives in the country near Kingston, Ontario, well away from Nighttime city light.

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"Beautifully wrought, emotionally complex, satisfying fiction. Simonds may be the next Alice Munro."
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"This book achieves everything fiction can achieve, and it does so with strength and sureness, eloquence and sweetness. If Merilyn Simonds's writing were a river, it would be natural, wide and deep."
–Montreal Gazette

"[These] stories are haunted by unseen presences and infused with the feeling that something extraordinary could happen any minute."
–Ottawa Citizen

"Writing lapidary sentences, Simonds has crafted stories so solid they seem sculpted, yet so delicate they remain full of mystery."
–Publishers Weekly

"Wise, potent, and luminous.…By turns joyful and melancholy, this book is an event, a revelation of the fact that, for better or worse, everything matters."
–Diane Schoemperlen

"Merilyn Simonds is an accomplished alchemist.…The Lion in the Room Next Door shines as an exemplary work of autobiographical fiction."
–National Post

"Lush, gorgeous and evocative…charged with precise observation, generosity, acceptance and the magic that comes of looking closely at the world in which we all dwell."
–Douglas Glover

"An accomplished, at times exhilarating collection."
–eye Weekly

"A marvellous journey through strange lands (and familiar ones) to the intimate landscape of a remembered self. Unflinchingly observed, intensely realized, and beautifully evoked. It is a wonderful book."
–Ronald Wright

"Spellbinding. As readers, we share her journey as she travels a jarring, emotionally-mined road from childhood to the adult destinations that form her fate.…One to be read and re-read with astonished appreciation."
–London Free Press

"What is remarkable about these stories is the intensity of feeling in the writing and its sheer quality. The observation of the details of life are Chekhovian in their accuracy…"
–Publishing News (U.K.)

"These aren't just the stories of one life; here are the patterns found in all our lives, richly celebrated."
–Gail Anderson-Dargatz

"Written with delicacy and grace, illuminating both the nature of memory and the kind of work fiction can perform.…"
–Hilary Mantel

"Haunting.…The stories are seductive, melancholy and dark, sensual and sexual. Danger, assault, or loss is revealed, sometimes unexpectedly, or lurking just around the corner, just under the surface."
–Booklist (starred review) (U.S.)

"These stories, all rendered in perfect detail, have at their heart the essence of a woman's soul: the permutations of love, the understanding of loss and memory. It is simply beautiful."
–Erika de Vasconcelos