We Have Never Lived on Earth

Name: We Have Never Lived on Earth
Author: Kasia Van Schaik
ISBN: 9781772126280

Kasia Van Schaik

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Kasia Van Schaik

awards won

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#8074 of 8,085 books · #3154 in Fiction

Longlisted for the Giller Prize (2023).

Kasia Van Schaik's debut story collection follows the journey of Charlotte Ferrier, a child of divorce raised by a single mother in a small town in British Columbia after moving from South Africa. The stories traverse the most intimate, violent, and transforming moments of female experience in a world threatened by ecological crisis. Charlotte navigates relationships--with lovers, parents, friends, and environments--as they form and fray. Mother and daughter wait out the end of a bad year in a Mexican hotel; a friendship is tested as forest fires demolish Charlotte's town; a childhood friend disappears while travelling through Europe; and a girl on the beach examines the memories of dying jellyfish. Each story asks: how do we find connection in a world shaped by isolation? How do we accept the new? Written in startling, poetic prose, We Have Never Lived On Earth captures the feelings and experiences of being a woman: physical and psychological threat, creativity, disappointment, objectification, and desire. These powerful portraits of female interiority balance nostalgia, fear, and hope for the future as they tell of the struggle to understand what it means to live on earth.

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