How to Be Alone

A breathtaking duet of spare, poetic novellas documenting the double-edged sword of self-acceptance.

Heather Nolan returns with How to Be Alone, a pair of novellas that depict the euphoric highs of a Queer awakening and the crushing lows of feeling Othered in a world that isn’t built for you. In this short but weighty book, Nolan explores themes such as isolation, trauma, and loss against the vibrant streets of Montreal. Here, in a city famous for bringing people together, the streets serve as a palette with a different purpose: a foil for those struggling to connect with the world around them.

How to Be Alone on Boulevard Saint-Laurent follows a fragmented trail left by Kaitlin, a narrator who finds moments of astonishing absurdity and beauty in the mundane as she wanders along Boulevard Saint-Laurent. In How to Be Alone on Rue Sainte Catherine, Lev moves to the Gay Village in Montreal to escape his mother, but what he finds is not what he expected.

A writer of uncommon talent, Nolan creates characters that reveal themselves through an understated confessional — the empty spaces holding meaning as much as the worded ones.

AUTHOR

Heather Nolan

Heather Nolan is a neurodiverse writer from St. John’s, NL. They are the author of This Is Agatha Falling (Pedlar Press, 2019), which was longlisted for the BMO Winterset Award and the ReLit Award. They have published poetry and prose across Canada, the US, and the UK. They were the winner of the Gregory J. Power Poetry Award, and were longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. This is their first poetry collection.

Reviews

With acerbic humour and lyrical grace Heather Nolan sweeps a whole sultry city into this slim volume

In How to be Alone Heather Nolan takes us through the stark daylight and dark corners of Montreal weaving brushstrokes of isolation addiction and longing and finding connection within the fragility of modern humanity This work is mesmerizing eloquent and just stunningly beautiful A new favourite

With this nimble pair of delicate novellas Heather Nolan joins the ranks of Canadian authors who continue to find inspiration in Montreals city streets Alternating between darkly sardonic and affectionally tender Nolans parallel stories pack an emotional punch surprising you as they sneak up on you with their lean fragmented and graceful prose These twin tales deftly depict different ways of being alone in a city brimming with people and possibility

How to Be Alone emulates the vertiginous sense of watching train cars hurtle past lives halfglimpsed behind each window Its characters take on a similar fragmented quality They are drawn to community yet through circumstance and their own design they are pulled toward isolation Readers are left with an impressionistic and melancholy portrait of queer urban existence
– Literary Review of Canada

Theres a range of sensation wit eroticism a spectrum of human nature expressed through fully realized tactile senses of sight and sound and taste
– Saltwire