“Wry and full of heart” — Chatelaine
Winner
Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction
John V. Hicks Award for Fiction
High Plains Book Award
Together We Read Canada 2023
Do you ever look back and wonder, What if?
“ A remarkable book . . . a haunting, thrilling glimpse of the slender choices our lives hang by. ”
— Nino Ricci, author of Sleep and Lives of the Saints
Meet Sylvie — funny, sly, sensual and flawed.
She can’t always count on herself to make good choices. She may or may not recognize a life-or-death moment, may or may not cancel her own wedding with a day to spare, might just try to walk past store security with a little something in her pocket. Like all of us, Sylvie must make decisions that have reverberations for years to come. Unlike the rest of us, Sylvie gets to live more than one life.
This novel asks big questions.
Is there a right path and a wrong path, or does each possibility hold its share of pleasure and pain? Does a person have an immutable self, or is her essence dependent on circumstance? Where does our all-too-human insatiability lead us? This energetic and innovative book creates a world without the usual limits and a protagonist who is conflicted, charismatic, brave, and full of curiosity. If Sylvie had Nine Lives is for everyone who has ever asked, What if...?
“A sharp and vibrant novel-in-stories that delves with humour and humanity into the brimming possibilities of a flawed but appealing heroine. If Sylvie Had Nine Lives is a vivid exploration of the unexpected choices and chances that can make up a life – and a self.”
“Sylvie, the engaging heart of this inventive novel-in-stories, is a woman who truly contains multitudes. With these tales of rash decisions, romance, mishaps and missteps, Leona Theis delves deeply into the layers that make up a life, many times over. Readers will be surprised and entertained as they get to know a new Sylvie in each chapter, every one a gem.”
“If Sylvie Had Nine Lives is a remarkable book, a palimpsest of different versions of a life that gives us a haunting, thrilling glimpse of the slender choices our lives hang by and the tangled threads that make even the simplest of them infinite mysteries.”
“If Sylvie Had Nine Lives folds and unfolds connections, choices, fates and futures. Sylvie’s possible lives are observed with an astonishing acuteness of vision that moves beyond the specific experience of Saskatchewan to the specific experience of the reader and shears the soul ….”
“A curiously moving story about self-knowledge and moral quandaries; it’s also darkly funny, and beautifully observed.”
Michael Noll created a writing exercise based on a passage in If Sylvie . . .
Find the exercise here.
He also interviewed me.
Michael is the author of The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction.