Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2018
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Daring, singular, and provocative, Demi-Gods announces the arrival of one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary literature.
It is 1950, and nine-year-old Willa's sheltered childhood is about to come to an end when her mother's beau arrives with his two sons to her family's summer home in British Columbia. As Willa's older sister pairs off with the older of these boys, Willa finds herself alone in the off-kilter company of the younger, Patrick. When, one afternoon, Patrick lures Willa into a dilapidated rowboat, Willa embarks upon an increasingly damaging relationship with Patrick, one that will forever reconfigure her understanding of herself.
Demi-Gods traces the tumultuous years of Willa's coming-of-age as she is drawn further into Patrick's wicked games. Though they see each other only a handful of times, each of their encounters is increasingly charged with sexuality and degradation. When Willa finally realizes the danger of her relationship with Patrick, she desperately tries to reverse their dynamic, with devastating results.
"Starred Review. Set in both British Columbia and Southern California, Robertson's searing debut novel (following the story collection Wallflowers) is a richly layered coming-of-age story exploring the thrills and dangers of a young girl named Willa and her adolescent sexual awakening ... Robertson's deliciously enigmatic style is the perfect analogue to Willa's absorbing yet deeply haunting journey of self-discovery." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Demi-Gods is a resolutely sure-footed piece of writing, moving with fleetness and agility over its chosen terrain. It's the work of a writer who knows how to pace herself - when to sprint and when to hang back. Robertson - whose 2014 story collection, Wallflowers, was extravagantly praised by critics - is a landscape artist with the signal ability to re-map spacious exteriors into teeming headspaces." - Quill & Quire
"There's only a loose sense of plot, and by the book's end, in the present day, readers won't be sure they even know Willa yet, making language, mood, and setting the primary draws here." - Booklist
"Its nod to the classics makes Demi-Gods comparable to Donna Tartt's The Secret History. As does the feeling of a new and important author arriving." - Financial Times
"Wallflowers, Robertson's 2014 collection of short stories, established her as one of [Canada]'s most-talented young writers. In her sly, sexually charged coming-of-age novel Demi-Gods, a young girl and her older step-brother fall into a peculiar, and perhaps sinister, relationship." - The Globe and Mail, "Most Anticipated Books of 2017"
"Eliza Robertson has followed her 2015 collection of short stories, Wallflowers, with a debut novel that is gripping, original and richly descriptive, full of perceptive observations of sibling dynamics. It also builds tension underneath the saccharine surface of 1950s suburbia, conjuring the atmosphere of a breathlessly hot summer's day shortly before a storm breaks, amid the growing tension about where Patrick's dark games will lead. A daring page-turner to devour in one sitting." - Daily Express
"Her skill as a writer is beyond question: every sentence feels crafted and she evokes America in the 1950s with such care that it seems to swim before the reader's eyes like a heat haze." - Sunday Times
"In her poetic, essential debut novel, Eliza Robertson aims an unflinching gaze at the temptation and consequences of weaponized desire. Demi-Gods is a brutally beautiful coming-of-age story that sings with language as lovely, wild, and full of ominous longing as the young woman at its center." - Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire
"Unsettling and compulsive, Demi-Gods is a fearless novel and Eliza Robertson a daring new novelist." - John Boyne, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies
"Atmospheric and lushly detailed, Demi-Gods captures the wonder and menace of adolescence in ways both unsettling and profound." - Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and A Piece of The World
This information about Demi-Gods was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eliza Robertson studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize. In 2013, she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Journey Prize and CBC Short Story Prize. Her debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice. Most recently, she is the winner of the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Prize. She lives in Norwich, England.
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