Watching You Without Me

"Karen has come home to Nova Scotia for the first time in a decade to oversee her mother’s funeral and tend to her affairs. Irene, a trained nurse, had spent her life caring for Karen’s older sister Kelli, who was born with a developmental disability. Before her death, Irene had secured a placement for Kelli at the Seaside Care Facility, but after the funeral, in a fog of guilt and grief over her neglect of Irene and Kelli over the years, Karen starts to second-guess her mother’s instructions. Not knowing which way to turn, she begins to depend on Trevor, one of Kelli’s caregivers, for both advice and support, trusting him all the more once she learns how close he was to Irene. Slowly, Trevor insinuates himself into Karen and Kelli’s lives. Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Lynn Coady delivers a creepy and wholly compelling novel about the complex relationship between mothers and daughters and sisters, women and men, and who to trust and how to trust in a world where the supposedly selfless act of caregiving can camouflage a sinister self-interest."--

Prize history

• Scotiabank Giller Prize

  2020

  Longlist