From the renowned author of Sweetness in the Belly (a major motion picture starring Dakota Fanning, premiering at TIFF, September 2019), The Beauty of Humanity Movement and This Is Happy, comes a bold, urgent and richly imagined novel about what it means to be a family in our modern world.Lila is on a long, painful journey toward motherhood. Tess and Emily are reeling after their ugly separation and fighting over ownership of the embryos that were supposed to grow their family together. And thousands of miles away, the unknown man who served as anonymous donor to them all is being held in captivity in Somalia. While his life remains in precarious balance, his genetic material is a source of both creation and conflict.What does it mean to be a family in our rapidly shifting world? What are our responsibilities to each other with increasing options for how to create a family?As these characters grapple with life-altering changes, they will...

Thelma is six years old. Life at home is unsettling and disturbing; her father's games are not enjoyable and her mother dotes on Willy, the favoured child. When her parents move to Canada, Thelma smuggles her imaginary friends with her in her suitcase.By turns harrowing and wonderfully funny, Mouthing the Words tells Thelma's story of sexual abuse, anorexia, borderline multiple personality disorder and her return to England. Reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson and Sylvia Plath, Mouthing the Words is a remarkable and inspiring fiction debut

Set in contemporary Vietnam, this is the story of a country undergoing momentous change and the story of how family is defined -- not always by bloodlines but by the heart.Tu' is a young tour guide working in Hanoi for a company called New Dawn. While he leads tourists through the city, including American vets on "war tours," he starts to wonder what it is they are seeing of Vietnam --and what they miss entirely. Maggie, who is Vietnamese by birth but has lived most her life in the U.S., has returned to her country of origin in search of clues to her dissident father's disappearance during the war. Holding the story together is Old Man Hung, who has lived through decades of political upheaval and has still found a way to feed hope to his community of pondside dwellers.This is a keenly observed and skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption and renewal of long-lost...

'"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them,' Isak Dinesen once said. Sorrows are all pain otherwise, pain without sense or meaning. But joys, too, it seems to me, need their context. And sometimes their coexistence needs to be borne. The coexistence or possibility of the opposite can be what gives an experience its meaning. At its simplest, that is a story." --Camilla Gibb, This Is Happy In this profoundly moving memoir, Camilla Gibb, the award-winning, bestselling author of Sweetness in the Belly and The Beauty of Humanity Movement, reveals the intensity of the grief that besieged her as the happiness of a longed for family shattered. Grief that lived in a potent mix with the solace that arose with the creation of another, most unexpected family. A family constituted by a small cast of resilient souls, adults broken in the way many of us are, united in love for a child. Reflecting on tangled moments...

Review“An astonishing novel replete with the amazing possibilities of survival, reunion and letting go.” -- *The Globe and Mail“Gibb is surely one of the most talented writers around. . . . She can do funny, she can do sad, she can do sex. I suspect that there is little that this wonderful woman cannot do.” -- The Times* (London)“Gibb has an impressive gift for tart description. . . . Her depictions are seductive: each is so sordid you can’t help but be fascinated . . . bursting with ideas and insight.” -- Vancouver Sun“Camilla Gibb is developing a reputation for sharp, coruscating narratives of dysfunctional families. . . . [This is a] funny, twisted, heart-breaking novel.” -- The Independent (UK)“Gibb’s literary masterpiece inspires us to reflect on our own lives.” -- Hamilton SpectatorPraise for Mouthing the Words:“Mouthing the Words rings with an authority rarely found in first novels. By dint of Gibb’s lush, visceral prose, Mouthing the Words persuasively charts one woman’s journey back to wholeness.” -- The Washington Post“Gibb’s debut novel is both gut-wrenching and gut-busting. Ridiculously good for a first novel.” -- NOW Magazine“Gibb scales her story small, twists her sentences into prickly, unsentimental assaults and ends up with a portrait of terrible, comic humanity.” -- The New York TimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.Product DescriptionWith her second novel, The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, award-winning and celebrated author Camilla Gibb probes the bruises of family with humanity, hilarity, and a keen eye for the grotesque to deliver one of the most anticipated books of the year.A startling and ambitious novel, as funny as it is poignant, The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life tells the story of Blue and Emma Taylor, who, despite an almost telepathic connection, respond to the sudden disappearance of their explosive father in remarkably different ways. Emma sets off in pursuit of a new family, and discovers a sense of belonging in the most unexpected places. Burly, tattoo-stamped Blue, haunted by the brutal, disparaging voice of their father, embarks on a cross-country search for the elusive parent. Emma and Blue share a most intimate connection, one forged in the secret worlds and wordless communications of childhood. As they grow, they discover the limits of the language they share.Camilla Gibb’s debut novel, Mouthing the Words, won the 2000 City of Toronto Book Award, and has been published in twelve countries. Camilla is one of two Canadian authors named to the Orange Futures List, compiled by the Orange Prize jury to celebrate twenty-one promising writers to watch in the new century.From the Trade Paperback edition.