Strange Heaven (Reader's Guide Edition)

9780864926173

Lynn Coady (Author) $19.99 Paperback Published May 28, 2010 - In Stock Goose Lane Editions

She's depressed, they say. Apathetic. Bridget Murphy, almost eighteen, has had it with her zany family. When she is transferred to the psych ward after giving birth and putting her baby up for adoption, it is a welcome relief - even with the manic ranting of a teen stripper and come-ons of another delusional inmate. But this oasis of relative calm is short-lived. Christmas is coming, and Uncle Albert arrives to whisk her back to the bedlam of home and the booze-soaked social life that got her into trouble in the first place. Her grandmother raves from her bed, banging the wall with a bedpan through a litany of profanities. Her father curses while her mother tries to keep the lid on developmentally delayed Uncle Rollie. The baby's father wants to sue her, and her friends don't get that she's changed.

Strange Heaven is Lynn Coady's gutsy first novel. Following its first publication in 1998, it was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction and won the Dartmouth Book Award and the Atlantic Booksellers' Choice Award.

Accolades