Uncertain Kin

By: Janice Lynn Mather

Narrated by: Catharine Archer

Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

From Governor General's Literary Award finalist Janice Lynn Mather comes this mesmerizing collection of linked stories that explores the beauty and brutality of being alive.

SET AGAINST THE VIVID backdrop of The Bahamas, these eighteen luminous and haunting stories introduce us to women and girls searching for certainty and belonging as they navigate profound upheaval. The characters are bold and big-hearted, complex and intimately familiar. They grapple with the bonds of kinship and the responsibilities of parenthood, with grief, longing, betrayal, coming of age and what it means to be a woman.

Little girls disappear from their beds one lush August.

A jogger with a secret diagnosis makes a sinister discovery on the beach.

An island wakes to blood pouring from its taps after a pastor's tirade.

An immigrant mother new to Vancouver struggles to plant roots in a city that doesn’t want her or her son.

Tinged with folklore and the surreal, Uncertain Kin is grounded by its emotional richness and breathtaking insight into our relationships with others—and ourselves. This extraordinary collection signals the debut of an important new voice in literature.

©2022 Janice Lynn Mather (P)2022 Doubleday Canada

Critic reviews

"These stories travelled through me, like a shuddering sound system, like a bolt of menace, like a thrilling crush. They made me feel many things deep in my bones. Janice Lynn Mather is a remarkable writer, a conjurer of beautiful weirdness and eerie minutiae. This utterly absorbing collection is a reminder that sometimes reality must bend to let in more truth. A dazzlingly original debut." (Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life)

"In Uncertain Kin, Janice Lynn Mather enchants with striking and deeply compelling prose. The women and girls in this stunning collection of linked stories are flawed and persistent; they are vivid in their desires. In Mather's deft hands, The Bahamas becomes as much a character as it is the lush backdrop against which these femmes assert themselves and grapple with themes of longing and belonging. These characters and their plights will stay with me for a long while. At turns heart-wrenching, chilling, hypnotizing and redemptive, Uncertain Kin is a collection I will return to again and again." (Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Honey Butter Pig Bread) 

"Here's one important question: why waste little girls? Here's one incredible silencer: they can be such nice things. This is an intricate series of snapshots into the big and little lives of girls and women, sort of like watching a movie in slow motion. Janice Lynn Mather is a writer of vivid sensibility: dreamlike, dangerous, daring. What you get with Uncertain Kin is an endless summer romance, a quiet dinner in the middle of an earthquake. I just love that kind of juxtaposition." (Téa Mutonji, author of Shut Up You’re Pretty)