Molly Lynch, "The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman" (Catapult, 2023)

Ada--a woman from Montreal living reluctantly in Michigan--vanishes from her bed one night while her husband Danny is asleep beside her, her young son, Gilles, in the next room. Desperate to locate Ada before Gilles understands what has happened, Danny begins a search. But the feds are already involved: across the country and around the world, mothers are vanishing from their homes.

Where did Ada go? What has she gone through? And how does the mystery relate to the forest that she seemed magnetically drawn to?

Confronting the role of motherhood and the meaning of home in the wreckage of capitalism and climate change, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman (Catapult, 2023) is that rare, dazzling debut that is both thrilling and profound. It is a mystery, a play on myths of metamorphosis, and above all, a story of love--between husband and wife, mother and child--deeply troubled by the future we face.

Molly Lynch is a writer. She grew up on the West Coast of Canada and lived in Ireland as a teenager. She worked in Europe and traveled extensively through the Middle East, before studying Literature in Montreal. She did an MFA in Baltimore during the first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement and became involved in community activism against racist policing and apartheid. She now teaches creative writing as well as literature courses on social justice at the University of Michigan.

Books Recommended:

• Hanan Al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahara
• Anne Enright, The Gathering

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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