Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner's career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler's hands?
When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose's world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head.
With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.
Read MoreBeautifully rendered... frank and acidly funny... It's a large-hearted, resonant novel, filled with an interiority that opens out - a generous work. - GuardianAnn-Marie MacDonald captures the dark hilarity of parenthood like nobody else. I gulped down Adult Onset in a single day. - Emma Donoghue, author of RoomDefinitely recommended. - Daily MailSensitive and unmistakeably heartfelt. - Sunday TimesA complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life. - Sarah Waters, author of The Paying GuestsRemarkable...an engrossing, disturbing and layered tale. - Chicago TribuneShe has again delivered a masterpiece. - The Globe and MailA lively, moving, and often funny story that has the potential to help usher in a new era of honest literary depictions of families in all their permutations. - The Walrus