We Have Never Lived on Earth

Kasia Van Schaik's debut story collection follows the journey of Charlotte Ferrier, a child of divorce raised by a single mother in a small town in British Columbia after moving from South Africa. Mother and daughter wait out the end of a bad year in a Mexican hotel; a friendship is tested as forest fires demolish Charlotte's town; a childhood friend disappears while travelling through Europe; and a girl on the beach examines the memories of dying jellyfish. The stories traverse the most intimate and transforming moments of female experience in a world threatened by ecological crisis. Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2023. "She rests her hand on my arm, her eyes clear and serious. We could be the same person, encountering each other in a fragment of time lived twice." Balancing an ambivalent relationship to the past, and fear and hope for the future, Kasia Van Schaik's portraits of female interiority, immigrant identity, dislocation, and desire trace the transitions from girlhood to adulthood, grappling with the struggle to understand what it means to live on earth. Balancing an ambivalent relationship to the past, and fear and hope for the future, Kasia Van Schaik's portraits of female interiority, immigrant identity, dislocation, and desire trace the transitions from girlhood to adulthood. "Full of diffuse longing and hallucinatory memory, these stories shimmer and compel like half-remembered dreams. Van Schaik's poetic linked collection brings the reader on an evocative journey across decades and continents." Saleema Nawaz, author of Songs for the End of the World "We Have Never Lived On Earth contains a bright humour, a sharpness. There's an authentic, human thrumming behind these stories. With their focus on mothers, fathers, and daughters, these linked stories explore how initial models of care feed into our romantic loves. Kasia Van Schaik captures the souring phase of relationships, where the glue has become brittle and two individuals begin to lean away from each other. Yet the characters forge their way through these moments of dislocation with grace, humour, and the perfect amount of self-awareness, which makes the reader laugh out loud, or nod knowingly. At least it did for me." Eliza Robertson, author of Demi-Gods "Few writers can work with memory as vividly as Kasia Van Schaik-fusing fiction and remembrance with confidence, sensitivity and the shivering logic of dream. These are stories that glitter and then duck away from view, like a swimmer half-discerned. A beautiful book you can't forget." Sean Michaels, Giller Prize-winning author of Us Conductors and The Wagers "A riff on loneliness. Exquisitely written. Profoundly moving. A must read." Rosemary Sullivan, OC, award-winning author "In Kasia Van Schaik's visionary stories a generation will recognize its rootlessness and frail sense of futurity, as well as its desire for grace. We Have Never Lived On Earth is a beautiful collection that explores all realms of experience-what we see and what we dream. I couldn't get enough of this work's exquisite precision and depth." Seyward Goodhand, author of Even That Wildest Hope "We Have Never Lived On Earth speaks to many readers' own experiences of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, which involve the difficult work of figuring out how to move through loss and grief and, ultimately, how to be most alive in all of our imperfections. I have read many novels and collections that capture the feeling of threat the world can impose upon female bodies, but the quality of Van Schaik's prose made these experiences alive, honest, and corporeally real throughout each story in a way I had not encountered before." Heather Jessup, author of The Lightning Field and This Is Not a Hoax: Unsettling Truth in Canadian Culture "Traversing themes such as transience, loss, painful attachment, and belonging, Kasia Van Schaik's stories recall literary icons Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro, though wit