by Zoje Stage
First published 2023
Grace needs help with the mortgage after losing her job, so when her newly widowed mother Jackie asks to move in, Grace says yes. It is not a warm reunion. The two women have never been close, and the apartment shrinks fast under a pandemic lockdown. Jackie settles in and the old friction between them catches fire immediately. Grace starts dreaming about her twin sister, dead since childhood, the sister who was disabled and who Grace has never fully stopped grieving or feeling guilty about. Then Jackie finds out that Grace has been catfishing strangers online, and Jackie decides this is unforgivable. When Jackie levels an accusation at Grace that Grace can only read as an act of revenge, something in Grace begins to break. She stops sleeping. The walls of the apartment feel closer every day. The past and the present press in from both sides, and Grace can no longer tell what is real, what is paranoia, and what her mother is actually capable of. Zoje Stage, author of Baby Teeth, builds the tension one locked door at a time.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: claustrophobic, dark, emotionally-intense, paranoid, tension-filled, unreliable
Tropes: family-conflict, past-trauma, psychological-unraveling, unreliable-narrator
Setting: apartment
Period: pandemic-lockdown
319 pages · Paperback · Thomas & Mercer
Content warnings: emotional-abuse, gaslighting, mental-illness