Requests and Dedications

Set in the hip urban core of Toronto and in the city’s outlying areas, this is the story of an unlikely family – held together by love and longing, pain and regret – and what happens when the ties that bind them begin to unravel. There is Walker, a tender but rough-edged horse dealer trying to do the right thing; his fading lounge-singer girlfriend, Mimi; his sister, Joy, who cleans at the golf club nearby; and Joy’s teenage daughter, Tanis, self-sufficient, nervy, wise, locked in conflict with her mother, and ready to break away from the tangle of this makeshift family – and does, until a tragic event changes everything. Gritty, seductive, infused with wit and an undercover poignancy, this is an audacious and emotionally compelling novel by a writer who knows exactly where the heart lives and why it’s sometimes so hard to find it.

Elise Levine is the highly acclaimed author of a collection of stories, Driving Men Mad, and the novel Requests and Dedications. Her fiction has appeared in The Journey Prize Anthology, Coming Attractions, and Concrete Forest. A Canadian from Toronto, Levine is currently living in Chicago, where her husband, a composer, is finishing a Ph.D.