“[A]n unsettling, tender lyric, beautifully written in a mixture of poems, prose fragments and fairytales, a story like no other. Read it if you’re a mother. Read it if you’re not. It’s a splendid, unique contribution to our country’s literature.”

— Lorna Crozier

“Paré is a past winner of the Victoria Butler Book Prize, and it is easy to see why. She moves seamlessly between poetry and prose in the pages of Leaving Now, writing with an obvious respect for language. By making the choice to incorporate as much poetry into the novel as she does, Paré limits the actual number of words that makes up her story. There is a significant amount of white space in an already slim book, so it is especially important that the right words are in the right spaces. It’s a job Paré has done very well.”

— Colin Holt, Times Colonist

“Leaving Now is sometimes harrowing, occasionally funny, often heartbreaking and always engrossing. Paré’s distinctive style artfully mixes poetry, personal journal, feminist socio-political analysis and literary analysis of fairy tales. You can read the book with pleasure for its overall cleverness, for its emotional depth, for its poetry or for its setting in Montreal and Vancouver. You can read it as a heroic quest by the narrator to integrate personal truths within their historical moments and the literary traditions by which we try to understand our lives. Just read it.”

— Debby Yaffe, Herizons