Britt’s novel is an unflinching reminder that heartbreak doesn’t discriminate… . Britt reveals, moment by moment, the lifetime of a woman caught between the expectations of motherhood and personal fulfillment.

Fanny Britt’s Hunting Houses is as transparent and true a picture of startling, soul-seizing, everyday love as you’ll ever come across in fiction. But here, also, is the kind of haunting temptation that can threaten enduring love, the hairline crack from the past that promises to break apart everything that matters. Think Chekhov’s Lady with Lapdog or poor Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina — if those women were to fall in love in 80s Montreal, if they had to line up all night on the sidewalk waiting for Pearl Jam tickets, if they grew up to be real estate agents with an eye for homey interiors and faults in the foundation. Think of all the subtle, complex deals women make with themselves to stay true. In bone-honest, luminous prose, Britt shows the nature of lust and how we can become the playthings of our past desires, however illusory.

DEBUT NOVEL FROM AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR: Fanny Britt is the author of the best-selling, critically acclaimed graphic novels Jane, the Fox and Me (2013) and Louis Undercover (2017). Jane, the Fox and Me received three starred reviews, was selected for the New York Times Best Illustrated Books list, and won a Governor General’s Literary Award, among others. Upon writing, Louis Undercover has received four starred reviews. THE COMPLEXITIES OF MARRIAGE: This title fits in perfectly with an increasingly popular genre: books that take a look at the complexities of a marriage from the inside, including such titles as Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff and The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk. This debut novel from Fanny Britt takes an honest look at a woman thinking of leaving her husband and throwing away her idyllic suburban life for a chance to start over again with her first love. U.S. OUTREACH: Hunting Houses will be available on Edelweiss and NetGalley and galleys will be given away at Winter Institute 2018 and ALA Annual. We will also be doing a targeted IndieNext campaign for Hunting Houses.

Évelyne is crying in earnest now. I take her hand. I say yes, her house is fabulous. I myself would buy it if I could. It will make some family very happy just as hers was for several years.My client nods, I know she finds the idea comforting — all my clients do. There must be some solace in thinking your house will go on living apart from you, like an extension, a promise renewed no matter the hardships or failures, bestowing sudden meaning on sorrow. Personally, it's all a mystery to me since I have no desire to see others blossom where I once withered away — but then I'm not a very nice person. Évelyne shows me the rest of her house: two children's bedrooms. In the first room, a cream-coloured quilt in a delicate pattern of pink and pale-green buttercups and peonies. A number of lively drawings on the walls, all signed SOLENE. In the second bedroom, blue and green stripes, dinosaur figurines, wood letters painted red hanging on the door: MATTEO. Évelyne was astute enough to keep the walls white. It won't be as difficult for potential buyers to project their own lives onto them — nothing is less helpful than a pink bedroom covered in princess decals for the morale of a mother with two sons who longs for the daughter she never had and hopes to find in her new abode the secret formula that will at last guarantee her the perfect family she's dreamt of since childhood. I respond to the client with all the solicitude I can muster, Who knows, this house could be a lucky charm, but when, guilt-ridden at having downplayed the worth of the children she does have, she grabs hold of my arm, My boys are wonderful, I love them so much, after all, what counts is that they're healthy, no? Do you have children? and I answer, Yes, three boys, for the space of a second, she's caught between wanting to be me and relief that she isn't. Her coral lips give the faintest, saddest smile ever smiled and she murmurs: Three boys. That's quite something, isn't it.