Watching You Without Me - by Lynn Coady (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Watching You Without Me is like a Lorrie Moore book suffering a Patricia Highsmith fever dream. You slide right along on Coady's witty and endearing style, and meanwhile the trap has closed over you without your ever standing a chance. --Jonathan Lethem

After her mother's sudden death, Karen finds herself back in her childhood home in Nova Scotia for the first time in a decade, acting as full-time caregiver to her older sister, Kelli. Overwhelmed and consumed by the isolation of her new role, Karen finds a shoulder to cry on in Trevor--one of Kelli's caregivers. Karen gratefully accepts his friendship and comes to trust him all the more when she discovers how close Trevor was to her mother, Irene. But all is not as it appears to be. What begins with friendly advice and someone to talk to soon takes a dark and mysterious turn. Who is this person Karen has let into her home and into her family's life? How well does she know the stranger she has entrusted with her sister's well-being? As Trevor slowly weaves himself into Karen and Kelli's lives, Karen starts to grasp the unsettling truth about him and his relationship with her mother--and to experience for herself the true and dangerous nature of Trevor's care.

Review Quotes

"Expertly rendered characters, easy reading plot, and excellent pacing . . . With Watching You Without Me, Coady showcases just how smooth her writing is . . . We've come to expect a certain level of excellence from Lynn Coady. Watching You Without Me lives up to this expectation."
--Dory Cerny, Quill and Quire

"Watching You Without Me is both a suspenseful, deeply creepy page-turner and a beautifully subtle character study of a grieving woman slowly unravelling while trying to understand how to care for her sister, and herself, in an ableist world. Another masterpiece from the singular Lynn Coady."
--Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People

"Emotionally complex, with the twists of a chilling thriller, Coady's novel explores mother-daughter and male-female relationships, what it means to be a family, the rewards of selflessness versus selfishness, and the human need not to be alone."
--Mary Ellen Prindiville, Booklist

"Coady's unsettling tale of a clingy family caregiver explores a woman's grief over the death of her mother and her struggle to take care of her intellectually disabled sister . . . Coady impresses with her careful, humane characterization . . . [Watching You Without Me] stands out for its incisive, bleakly humorous look at gullibility and the complexities of guilt."
--Publishers Weekly

"A woman returns to her childhood home to settle her late mother's affairs . . . A thoughtful and intense drama about how insidiously family ties can be exploited.
--Kirkus

About the Author