Yara

FEATURED INQUILL & QUIRE'S 2023 FALL PREVIEWTHEGLOBE AND MAIL: BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2023CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN FALL 2023PUBLISHERS WEEKLYBIG INDIE BOOKS OF FALL 2023THEGLOBE AND MAILBEST 100 BOOKS OF 2023THETORONTO STARBEST 100 BOOKS OF 2023From the author of Maidenhead, a reverse cautionary tale about a young woman exploring the boundaries of sex and belonging in the early 2000s Distraught that her teenage daughter is in love with a woman a decade older, Yaras mother sends her away from their home in Brazil to Israel, on a Birthright trip for Jewish youth. Freed from her increasingly controlling and jealous girlfriend, Yara is determined to forge her own path and follow her desires.But Birthright takes a debaucherous turn, and Yara flees Israel for Toronto and then California. As she wanders, Yara is forced to reframe her relationship and her ideas around consent. Set in the sex-tape-panicked early 2000s,Yarais a reverse cautionary tale about what the body can teach us.Tamara Faith Berger is one of our best writers of the body, capturing in sharp, red-hot prose its raw animal urges, its often confused and contradictory desires, and the way our search for pleasure can be both liberatory and self-annihilating. Like Israel, bodies are contested territories, and in Berger's revelatory new novel, Yara seeks to wrest control and meaning from the forces that seek to instrumentalize hers: nationalism, capitalism, pornography, and lovers. Jordan Tannahill, author ofThe ListenersYarais a complicated novel about the confusions of consent and kinship, the way love makes victims of us all, told with cool, epigrammatic verve. As raw, destabilizing and searching as its titular protagonist, it's Berger's best book yet. Jason McBride, author ofEat Your MindCanadas finest and boldest writer. Tamara Faith Berger is my favourite ball buster. Anakana Schofield, author ofBina: A Novel in Warnings