Girlfriend on Mars

Description

The timeless storytelling of Ray Bradbury meets the observational power of Sally Rooney in this examination of a stagnant relationship that gets an otherworldly intervention.

Amber and Kevin grow and sell hydroponic weed out of their basement apartment in East Vancouver. They sit on the same green IKEA couch, eat the same gluten-free pizza, and watch the same movies as they always have. Kevin loves the ease and comfort of their relationship; until he discovers that Amber has been thinking of leaving…for Mars.

Kevin’s new routine involves watching Amber, each week, compete on a reality TV show to win the chance to populate Mars—with no promise of return. Her decision to secretly submit an application for the show forces Kevin to reckon with the trajectory of their relationship and face the possibility of being left behind. Amber begins to wonder what life will look like on another planet, and if the fulfillment and purpose she has been desperately seeking can only be found out of this world.

Based on a short story from her critically acclaimed The Dark and Other Love Stories, Deborah Willis takes readers inside a fractured relationship at its breaking point. Girlfriend on Mars poignantly examines how we can lose ourselves in other people and what we are willing to sacrifice to find meaning in our lives.DEBORAH WILLIS’s last short story collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of The Globe and Mail‘s Best Books of 2009, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for fiction. Her work has also appeared in The Walrus, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Lucky Peach, The Wall Street Journal, and Zoetrope. She has worked as a bookseller at Munro’s Books in Victoria, BC, as a technical writer, and as a writer-in-residence at Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver and at the University of Calgary. Deborah was born and raised in Calgary and is currently the Writer in Residence at MacEwan University in Edmonton.CA