Tessa McWatt

Where Are You, Agnes?

This stunning picture-book imagining of artist Agnes Martin’s childhood gives readers a glimpse into the life and work of one of the most esteemed abstract painters of the twentieth century.

Vital Signs

Narrated by a terrified male protagonist whose deep yearning for forgiveness might only be granted by a woman in the grips of dementia, Tessa McWatt’s Vital Signs is a thought-provoking and mesmerizing literary accomplishment – a compassionate and visceral study of a marriage at the brink of catastrophe.

This Body

This Body is a tender portrait of two people whose losses radiate and reflect against one another, each searching for truth, for love and for identity. Moving effortlessly and evocatively between London, Toronto and Guyana, the novel is enriched by recipes, letters and legends, revealing the traditions and tensions of a multicultural and politically volatile world.

THE SNOW LINE

Tessa McWatt''s breathtaking new novel explores love and endurance in the face of change and violence, and how people find wholeness and belonging when their own identities feel shattered.

Step Closer

In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, Emily, a young Canadian woman living in Spain, embarks on an effort to understand a tragedy involving two friends, Gavin and Marcus, along the Santiago de Compostela pilgrims’ trail. Determined to understand their thoughts and motivations and her own role in the incident, Emily recreates her friends’ actions […]

Out of My Skin

Daphne Baird impulsively leaves behind her boyfriend, her family, her whole life, for a new start in Montreal. Losing herself in the rhythmic roar of a copy shop by day, and haunting the sweltering, vibrant streets of the city by night, she collects fragments of histories and reconstructs other peoples’ lives. Out of My Skin explores […]

Higher Ed

In her most powerful and resonant novel to date, the acclaimed writer Tessa McWatt explores the ways in which people find love in desperately uncertain times. Against a backdrop of 21st-century east London, where cuts and job crunches and unemployment are ugly, unrelenting realities, three very different love stories bloom.

DRAGONS CRY

Over the course of the evening following the burial of his older brother, David, Simon and his partner, Faye, struggle to reconcile their pasts through the prism of the brother who brought them together, but who also drove them apart. A flood of memory — of childhoods in Canada and the Caribbean, of youthful hopes […]