Tear is a bold unflinching bildungsroman that moves chimeralike between the real and the imagined among the confusions and traumas of youth from the humane to the monstrous And therein author Erica McKeen accomplishes the truly remarkable While walking in the steps of such gothic icons as Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson McKeen manages to forge her own path avoiding the clichd the gratuitous and the overwritten to create in Tear an inventive affecting modern work With assured control of her craft and respect for both her readers and her genre forebearers McKeen writes with an originality sophistication and expertise well beyond her yearsJudges citation Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer PrizeTear is a deeply claustrophobic novel concerned with what is real and what is imagined and how being confined between the two is genuine torture It is about the fears that come from within and the monsters we manifest as a result forces that eventually destroy usbecome uswithout anyone even noticing It offers up the truly destructive forces of human emotion and human neglect and gives us a loss that mattersexcruciatingly soStacey May Fowles in Book Therapy for Open BookTearis at once a moment a novel and a life Drawing on Mary Shelley and creating something all her own Erica McKeen writes with urgency and mastery The elliptical movement of time draws the story in and out like a breath Memory experience and imagination collapse into a dizzying narrative of grief isolation and illness spanning years of a young students life reaching to the depths of her inner turmoil and the depths of her basement apartment In prose rich with texture Tear throbs on the page holds one in its grip until its finished McKeen writes like she cant help itFawn Parker author of What We Both KnowWhere does trauma make its home What shape does it take when it is suppressed left to wander the hallways of our minds linger in the spaces between Tear puts these questions at its core spinning them into a twilight world where materiality and metaphor collide as trauma becomes embodied in its quest to live and be heard What results is a gripping frightening novel with a deeply gothic sensibility somewhere between Henry James and Shirley Jackson Tear is a delightfully creepy lyrical novelBroken PencilTear is making waves for its delicious creepiness and brilliant storytelling which McKeen creates with expert control in the tradition of Shirley JacksonFilled with quiet dread and building to a climax both frightful and satisfying McKeen is not only setting out to scare our pants off shes exploring complex social issues about identity isolation manipulation and in particular womens anger and what were comfortable witnessing in terms of female rageOpen BookTear is a melodious novel reckoning with adolescence the complexities of home and the body Mckeens protagonist Frances James is both bewildering and brilliant as she is introspective navigating her isolated life in London Ontario She is a character whose pain and memory works to unearth a turbulent hunger for the past parts of herself a hunger that will not subside It is a hunger readers will begin to feel too as they immerse themselves in this luscious and monstrously deep work of horrorMallory Tater author of This Will Be Good and The Birth Yard Tear as in ripping a page from a book rejecting a storyline Tear as in a tearstained face letting out a scream Tear a haunting homonymReaders will feel the prose simmering on their skin as they witness a surreal journey in a musty basementRachel Shabalin Filling StationAn unnerving study of isolation and alienation Tear pulls at the threads of a fraying border between the real and the monstrous uncanny McKeens prose is taut and evocative the novel simmers with repressed rage and then confronts us with its thrilling and terrifying transmutation A fearless and unforgettable debutAimee Wall author of We JaneThis haunting disorienting tale traces Francess descent into madness with empathetic precisionTheres heartbreak in the girlhood silences of Tear a hallucinatory psychological horror novel in which you only have to watch out for the quiet ones because no one watched out for themMichelle Schingler Foreword ReviewDark and unsettling Tear gives us a portrait of sensitive artistic Frances and her subsequent isolation that turns into a vivid inward journey This novel is feverish and eerie with much to say about the impact of early memories on our adult lives as well as on our dreams and psyche Francess internal descent is vivid captivating and at times jarringSophie McCreesh author of Once More With FeelingIs Frances James sleeping or dead Is she trapped in one of her grandfathers macabre stories Did her childhood best friend imagine her into existence McKeens debut is a story about stories a scratching sound emanates from the walls doors are suddenly and unexpectedly locked a tree grows around a baby rabbits skull and a young woman wiggles her toes to remind herself that she is real Tear is a startling novel about monstrosity femininity and embodiment that leaves us with the impression that the most uncanny spacesand the ones we should be most frightened ofare the homes we live within With Tear McKeen shows a unique and striking voice that will haunt readers long after theyve turned the last pageAmy LeBlanc author of I Know Something You Dont Know and UnlockingClarice Lispector meets Daphne du Maurier in Erica McKeens beautiful surreal debut One of the novels brilliant inventions is a dire space just off to one side of consciousness where bodies and minds dissolve and gather new form where loneliness is so real it comes alive With animistic lugubrious prose McKeen pulls the reader into the visionary emptiness of Frances Jamess alienation toward a magnificent exhilarating study of reality and self Like a ghost haunting her own life Frances shocked me with her uncanniness and moved me with her need Here distortions are as exquisite as they are grotesque This is triumphant terrorSeyward Goodhand author of Even That Wildest Hope