“A powerful, queer coming-of-age story about a young woman in the throes of first love… This gripping novel has the distinct pang of nostalgia mixed with the discomfort of growing up - a bittersweet but delicious experience.”- Buzzfeed The Adult has it all: betrayal, the intensity of inexperienced queer infatuation, and a perceptive and comic voice. A bright and poignant coming-of-age story that will leave you thinking, 'I hope Bronwyn Fischer writes more!’”- Emily Austin, author of Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead Fischer’s debut novel is like a visit from your younger self-even as you worry about Natalie, you won’t be able to look away.”- Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Natalie’s voice-restrained, lyric, and precise-transported me back to the exquisite desperation of first love. “ The Adult smolders with barely contained longing. Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2023 by Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, & The Blade.

Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch. With atmospheric, electric prose that captures the anxiety and emotional intensity of young adulthood like never before, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and learning to free oneself from the expectations of others. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually coming to know. This only deepens her obsession, even as she comes to suspect Nora is hiding something. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. She begins spending more and more of her time at Nora’s perfect, tidy home in her beautiful, quiet world. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.Īnd then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. An addictively gripping coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fictionĮighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city.

The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer