On Sale July 30, 2024
The brilliant and darkly hilarious debut novel about how the past can come back to haunt you (literally) by the New York Times bestselling author of Everyone Here Is Lying, Shari Lapena.
Harold Walker, desperately average, is in the throes of a mid-life depression. His wife Audrey clings to an illusory sense of control—over their home, their teenaged sons, Dylan and John, and her own explosive secret. The death of a long-estranged friend triggers a series of perturbing events that catapults Harold out of his La-Z-Boy and throws the household into chaos. Things go flying when the dead begin communicating with Harold, leaving Audrey’s secret vulnerable to exposure, and Harold more confused than ever. What these familiar voices from the afterlife ultimately reveal is just how little the living know about living.
Reviews
“A wonderfully alive, funny and inventive novel.” —David Adams Richards
“Wonderful high-purpose fun. The characters try to be unremarkable, but remarkable things keep happening to the. I enjoyed it tremendously.” —Paul Quarrington
“[An] enormously appealing first novel.” —Quill & Quire
“Lapena’s touch is sure, her labours invisible . . . [her] style is a gently exaggerated verisimilitude, her form spooky farce, all held aloft by sensitive portraits of four very different human[s].” —The Globe and Mail
“A delight to read: funny and tender and vibrant. The story rips along, told in vivid scenes that are masterfully paced. It’s all working in this novel: conflicted characters frustrated with each other, hope-mangled maybe, but still optimistic. It rings true in the most charming and most satisfying way. I gobbled it up.” —Eliza Clark
“I was attracted immediately to its humour, the implicit comedy in the matter-of-fact way Shari juxtaposes the mundane with the outlandish.” —Lynn Coady
“Things Go Flying is just plain fun, a continual giggle. Hilarious, fast-paced and irreverent, it is about a modern dysfunctional family that could be yours or mine—but thank goodness it is not.” —Owen Sound Sun Times