THE NINE-CHAMBERED HEART

"Whatever Janice Pariat is doing in these vignettes — unravelling layers, offering shards, making and unmaking a heart — she forces you to alter your vision. By turning the intimate eye of love inside out, she's saying, here is the real wonder: a whole is made of many broken parts.

It is a startling way to look at ourselves, to reach for the stories of our own hearts."

Tishani Doshi

Author of Small Days and Nights

 "Like memories surfacing through the fog of time, like whispers heard through damask curtains, like shards of glass that could glitter in a kaleidoscope or stab you to the heart..."

Jerry Pinto

Author of The Education of Yuri

 "A tender puzzle of a book. Its bewitching premise forces us to slowly put the pieces together, our understanding of the protagonist layering with each chapter — and yet maintains the tantalising distance. that the ones who've loved her experience too. We know her, but only as much as they know her. It explores with sharp beauty the mystery at the centre of loving anyone, the various things we present and project through the relationships of our lives."

Sophie Mackintosh

Author of The Water Cure

"A splintered yet luminous portraiture of one woman’s life through the perspectives of her lovers and would-be lovers. As the nine narrators recall their interactions with this woman, what emerges is a figure who is at once real and mythical, the pulsing heart of an enthralling book." 

The Guardian

"Sublime...Pariat writes with great elegance, her sentences rich with introspection. There's a feeling of poetry to the language...captivating."

Irish Times

"It's the artful pleating of this subtle, psychologically astute novel that sets it apart, each shard-like vignette deepening our concern for its central character as we see into her lovers' hearts and minds." 

Daily Mail