by Zoey Leigh Peterson
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2017
256 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In this moving and enormously entertaining debut novel, longtime romantic partners Kathryn and Chris experiment with an open relationship and reconsider everything they thought they knew about love.
After nine years together, Kathryn and Chris have the sort of relationship most would envy. They speak in the shorthand they have invented, complete one another's sentences, and help each other through every daily and existential dilemma. But, as content as they are together, an enduring loneliness continues to haunt the dark corners of their relationship. When Chris tells Kathryn about his feelings for Emily, a vivacious young woman he sees often at the Laundromat, Kathryn encourages her boyfriend to pursue this other woman - certain that her bond with Chris is strong enough to weather a little side dalliance.
Next Year, For Sure tracks the tumultuous, revelatory, and often very funny year that follows. When Chris's romance with Emily evolves beyond what anyone anticipated, both Chris and Kathryn are invited into Emily's communal home, where Kathryn will discover new possibilities of her own. In the confusions, passions, and upheavals of their new lives, both Kathryn and Chris are forced to reconsider their past and what they thought they knew about love.
Offering a luminous portrait of a relationship from two perspectives, Zoey Leigh Paterson has written an empathic, beautiful, and tremendously honest novel about a great love pushed to the edge. Deeply poignant and hugely entertaining, Next Year, For Sure shows us what lies at the mysterious heart of relationships, and what true openness and transformation require.
"The structural playfulness that characterizes many of the novel's later chapters offers some respite, but feels tacked on when compared with earlier chapters' more conventional storytelling." - Publishers Weekly
"What's most impressive is that debut novelist Peterson has written a book that concretely explores the beginnings of an open relationship, its joys and pitfalls, and pulls it off in this easy-to-read and sympathetic character study." - Booklist
"A crisp, exciting exploration of love, friendship, and everything in between. Peterson's one to watch." - Kirkus
This information about Next Year, for Sure was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Zoey Leigh Peterson was born in England, grew up all over the United States, and now lives in Canada. Her fiction has appeared in The Walrus, Grain, PRISM international, and has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and Best Canadian Stories. She is the recipient of the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction (The Malahat Review) and the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award (The New Quarterly). Next Year, For Sure is her first novel.
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