MARJORIE CELONA's (they/them) debut novel, Y, won France's Grand Prix Littéraire de l'Héroïne and was nominated for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Marjorie's work has appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, The Sunday Times, and elsewhere. Born and raised on Vancouver Island, they teach in the MFA Program at the University of Oregon.
A TORONTO STAR BESTSELLER
A Globe and Mail book to get you through till spring
A Chatelaine Thriller to read this winter
One of CBC's “40 great books to read this season”
Shortlisted for the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best
Crime Novel
Praise for How a Woman Becomes a Lake:
“Celona’s icily unsentimental novel offers less predictable riches,
unspooling instead into the complicated lives of her protagonist .
. . The fate of [Vera] is gradually made known through a drip-feed
of unconventional reveals, but for the reader its ramifications
have the shock value of cracking ice. An excellent novel about the
indelible damage dysfunctional parenting can inflict on a
vulnerable child.”
—The Daily Mail
“[H]aunting . . . How a Woman Becomes a Lake [has] both the artful
structure and the tension of a crime novel.”
—Quill and Quire
“[How a Woman Becomes a Lake is a] novel to feed your heart and
mind. . . . This crisply constructed novel . . . is a meditation on
family, loyalty and memory, [and] a thoughtful examination of how
lives collide.”
—Toronto Star
“To the reader picking up this book for the first time: I envy you,
such is the pleasure, depth, and beauty of the journey you’re about
to take. Haunting, deeply felt, ingeniously constructed, How A
Woman Becomes a Lake is a supremely satisfying novel, masterful on
every level. I could not put it down.”
—Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Dreamers
“This is a rare book that is satisfying in every possible way.
Beautifully written, clear-eyed and compassionate in its
examination of character, it's also a gripping mystery that kept me
reading late into the night. The story, and the questions it raises
about love, loss, and family, will stay with me for a long
time.”
—Leah Stewart, author of What You Don't Know About Charlie
Outlaw
“This book has moved into me; it occupies and haunts me. Marjorie
Celona writes with an empathy that manages to be both enveloping
and exact. How a Woman Becomes a Lake is about what it’s like to
long for your most secret self to be understood, while fearing that
such understanding might kill you. It is a feral, echoing,
complicatedly vulnerable work of art.”
—Sara Peters, author of I Become a Delight to My Enemies
“A woman’s disappearance sends out ripples of enduring questions.
What happens when darkness is handed down from one generation to
the next? How do secrets kept out of love warp the people who keep
them? Marjorie Celona wraps powerful ideas about care-taking
and morality around a tight, elegantly suspenseful story. This is a
beautifully written book that I read compulsively, in a single
sitting, all the way through to its haunting end.”
—Alix Ohlin, author of Dual Citizens
"How a Woman Becomes a Lake is a deeply empathetic and emotionally
astute novel that reads like a thriller. Everyone in this troubling
story is doing their best. And every one of Marjorie Celona's
sentences glints with an ice crystal's understated beauty. This is
a profound and generous-hearted page-turner.”
—Deborah Willis, author of The Dark and Other Love Stories
“It is not lightly that I say: I could not put this book down.
Celona’s writing possesses the clearness and poetry of a
compassionate, all-seeing ghost. Each time a character crossed the
page, I felt absorbed by their consciousness, invited to see the
story from a fresh, insistent perspective. On the one hand, How a
Woman Becomes a Lake offers a felt study of guilt, grief and blame.
On the other, the story will challenge your conceptions of love,
which can be greedy, as well as sacrificial and absolving.”
—Eliza Robertson, author of Demi-Gods
“A thriller with stunning writing and real honesty about
grief.”
—Stella Duffy, author of Theodora
“Poignant and lyrical, Celona makes finding out what happened to
Vera a burning curiosity for the reader. More importantly, she
makes what happens to all the characters feel
meaningful.”
—Chatelaine
“[While How a Woman Becomes a Lake] does come under the heading of
‘crime’, it is also a beautifully written exploration of grief,
vulnerability, guilt and violence. Becoming a lake (just in case
you were wondering) means to rest, to be still, to be separate, not
just from others but from yourself. What it means in the context of
this deeply satisfying book . . . well you’ll just have to read it
to find out!”
—Readings (AU)
“A highly original, beautifully crafted literary thriller packed
with characters that linger long in the mind.”
—The Irish Independent
“Celona has the courage to take her time, letting us have a
leisurely rummage inside her characters’ heads, refusing to be
trammelled by the usual rhythms of the whodunnit; and yet she
manages to pull off twists worthy of Harlan Coben . . . It’s a
rarity: a book confected with satisfying artfulness that feels like
a slice of real life.”
—The Daily Telegraph, five starred review
“Cool, clear, melancholy . . . the mystery at the heart of the
story is how lives can so easily fall into loneliness and
disconnection. A beautifully sad read.”
—The Sunday Express, five starred review
“. . . an unconventional and lyrical crime novel. . . . [How a
Woman Becomes a Lake]’s extraordinary sympathy and empathy is not
at odds with its moral clarity and, for all it deals with tragedy,
it is an uplifting read.”
—Morning Star (UK)
“An absorbing read from the get-go, Marjorie Celona’s [How a Woman
Becomes a Lake] succeeds on multiple levels—as character-driven
explorations of fear and love and loss, as domestic thriller, and
as page-turner mystery.”
—Vancouver Sun
“Celona’s simple but fluid prose weaves a kind of spell as it flows
across the page, leading the reader through a complicated web of
secrets and subplots.”
—The Winnipeg Free Press
“Celona has the courage to take her time, letting us have a
leisurely rummage inside her characters' heads, refusing to be
trammelled by the usual rhythms of the whodunnit; and yet she
manages to pull off twists worthy of Harlan Coben . . . It's a
rarity: a book confected with satisfying artfulness that feels like
a slice of real life.”
—Telegraph
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