Hi, It's Me

by Fawn Parker

Shortly after her mother’s death, Fawn arrives at the farmhouse. While there, she will stay in her mother’s bedroom in the house, which is also occupied by four women who live by an unusual set of beliefs.

Wrestling with longstanding compulsive and harmful behaviours, as well as severe self-doubt, Fawn is confronted with the reality of her mother’s death. It is her responsibility to catalogue the furniture and possessions in the room, then sell or dispose of them. Instead, Fawn becomes fixated on archiving her mother’s writing and documents, searching for signs, and drawing tenuous connections to help her understand more about the enigmatic woman in the pages.

"I am surrounded by mocking evidence of her inhabitancy of this room. Quickly, it is expiring. Today she was alive. When the day runs out that will no longer be true. Tomorrow I will be able to say that yesterday she was alive, at least. The next day, nothing. She will just be dead. The fact seems to be at its smallest now, growing with time. For now she is many things, and there are many places left to find her."

In Hi, It’s Me, Fawn Parker is unafraid to explore the bewildering relationship between the living and the dead. Strikingly original, provocative, and engrossing Hi, It’s Me takes us into the furthest corners of grief—and with astonishing precision and emotional force invokes the physicality and painful embodiment of terminal illness. This mesmerizing, devastating novel asks: why must it be this way?

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Audiobook

347 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 17, 2024

About the author

Fawn Parker is a novelist and poet from Toronto. Her novel What We Both Know (M&S 2022) was nominated for the Giller Prize and her recent novel Hi, It's Me (M&S 2024) was a finalist for the Writer's Trust Atwood Gibson Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award. Fawn is the Poet Laureate of Fredericton New Brunswick.

Reviews

[Dessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is basically a slow motion stress dream about grief. It’s weird and unsteady, but most of all absolutely enveloping, the way a nightmare is. The story also feels like a möbius strip of autofiction — curling back in on itself like a looping pedal repeats and returns and renews an audio sequence. Everything I read lately seems to be about grief, and here Parker makes it feel ugly, particularly and purposefully ugly, but that’s also exactly what grief is: just absolutely transformative and weird, and also somehow dysmorphically humiliating. Someone else please read this stat so I have someone to talk about it with?? Thank u 🙏🏻

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very excited to read HI, IT’S ME by Fawn Parker since I really enjoyed this author’s last novel What We Both Know and I really enjoyed this novel too! I love how her poet’s sensibility with language shines in this writing. I love reading fiction written by poets! This novel deeply explores the protagonist’s grief of losing her mother. I loved the Canadian setting, the focus on female friendships and sisterhood and the autofiction aspect as the main character is a writer named Fawn. I enjoyed the footnotes and the narrator’s reflections on her relationship with her mother and herself. I will be eager to read Parker’s next novel and I’d love to read her poetry too!

Thank you to the publisher for my ARC!

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 2 out of 5]

this started off really strong but i was bored by the last third of it

[Mike Thorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fantastic novel draws on aspects of modernism & "auto-fiction", but it's completely doing its own thing: page after page, I found myself marvelling at the novelty of insight and phrasing. A masterclass in voice: funny, brilliant, oh so real.

Listen to our Craftwork interview with Fawn.

[Deseray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel tells the story of Fawn who is currently battling the grief of losing her mother. It explores not only the topic of grief, but also the topics of female friendships and mental health.

Parker’s writing is crafted together so poetically, which is a fitting description because I found out after reading this that her last work was a work of poetry. That said however, she still manages to show the ugly that comes with grief in a way that feels so realistic and nearly jarring.

I definitely want to explore more of her work and I’m enamoured by her writing and upon some research she seems to write about topics I enjoy reading about. Her being Canadian is also a bonus!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for this gifted copy.

[Book.ishJulie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hi, It's Me is the second book I've read by Fawn Parker, and with each novel, I am more amazed by the level of her writing!

Written in an autofictional way, Parker's imagery was more real and thought-provoking since some version of her writer self was placed within the confines of this story. The complex and slow understanding that Fawn experienced after her mother's passing was a fever dream reality; her displacement was palpable and ripe with the realities one endures after living through this type of loss.

Parker writes in such a subtle, dancing, and alluding way, creating a light tough, which allows such a heavy subject to be expertly written about; never once becoming too overbearing or difficult to read. This book is poetic and graceful, full of grief, disbelief, and yearning.

For some inexplicable reason, my mind kept comparing Hi, It's Me to Mona Awad's Rouge (minus the horror aspects). Both books center around the death of the main characters mother and have undercurrents of vanity and satirical humour. Both are equally addicting, powerful, and moving!

Parker has again written a book that I can see being discussed and dissected in psychology or literature classes. It was a pleasure to have read!

Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada and McClelland & Stewart for the complimentary copies to read and review.

[Dave Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You can live your life against something, but you risk falling when that thing isn’t holding you up.” Wow. After taking this rich / sad / funny / personal / detached / engaged journey through fictional(?) Fawn Parker’s fictional(?) grief, I know I don’t actually know her. I just think I do. Read it.

[isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmmmm
this has all the makings of a book i'd love but maybe it's too toronto for me

[etta · Rating 3 out of 5]

the whole way through this teetered along the edge of being too experimental for my taste and ultimately i think it was. too much self-loathing, too many footnotes, too many dream sequences, too many pages of AI slop (please… have we reached this point?). there were enough relatable feelings and glimmers of plot to keep me turning the pages but for the most part i was just not on the same level as this book.

[Ariane Fairlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5! Introspective but not navel gazing, self deprecating but vulnerable, at times funny and disorienting, and structured creatively (use of footnotes as ex: LLM responses when she trains it to answer as her mother). I’m always afraid reading narratives centred on themes of grief will be too heavy, but I didn’t find that with this novel. Definitely recommend and excited to read more by Fawn Parker in future.

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can’t say this was an easy read at all. this one hurt a lot and felt a little too personal in a lot of ways.

parker effortlessly takes us through a journey of grief. a dream like mix of moments as they are fogged with memories and ache and the delusions of a woman grieving perhaps the most stunning loss of her life.

there’s a lot i could say about how this book made me feel, but i also don’t wanna put myself on blast like that!

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about a daughter grieving a mother who has died by MAID. I couldn’t connect with it. The constant footnotes were distracting and I saw no purpose to them. All of that could have just been in the story or left out entirely. The mother/daughter relationship was close but highly dysfunctional, and I didn’t enjoy reading about it. The main character is unlikeable, which is fine if the reader is led to understand her at least. I didn’t.

[Jeatherhane Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is by a local author, our poet laureate. She is a fantastic writer – I really loved the way she used language and the experimental form. It is a fictional account, with a basis in truth, about Fawn (the author and the character) losing her mother.

It was angry but also indifferent. The character’s emotions and actions were all over the place, which I guess is what happens when you are struggling with grief and anger and regret. It wasn’t an uplifting book.

[Sawyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

meditation on grief… this was difficult to read but so captivating

[Isabella Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t for the life of me put this book down. A beautiful and honest representation of grief. Fawn’s writing is one of a kind

[Juliann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s giving: “Hunger hurts but starving works when it costs too much to love” (thx, Fiona Apple).

This book is a literary banger full of irony, ache, and undermined climax (Parker’s specialty, imo). Linguistically scrumptious prose that comprises the inner workings of a (literally and figuratively) starved (and starving) artist-protagonist. Read it SLOWLY, then put it down when you need to process— you might end up hating it otherwise.

It is really cool to be able to witness a contemporary writer grow her practice in real time. I cannot believe the author is as young as she is for writing this ultra sophisticated book, and I’m excited to read the next one.

[Jeanelle d'Eon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a me book. An unreliable narrator and a messy female protagonist.

I didn’t breeze through this book because her jumbled anxiety thoughts and insecurities were too close to home. Never do I want to go back to those days of my twenties frantically searching everyone’s behaviours around me to parse out if they hate me. Even how she would become hyper aware of the way she was standing and how she thought people might be looking at the way she was standing and then adjusting the way she was standing. The freedom I felt in my 30s knowing everyone is worried about themselves and not looking at the way you were standing.

I also love when books dive deep in a short period of time. This book spans one full day.

I love messy women. Messy thoughts.

[Justin Timbol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute triumph.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing and well written but ultimately a bit too experimental for me I think. Wonder if I'd read it more quickly it might have been better!

[Melany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I read this too soon after my mum died. Also I was confused because the protagonist had the same names as the author. Is it an autobiography? I did enjoy the author’s interview on CBC Bookends.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. I was excited to read it after loosing my mother a year ago, but I could not follow what was going on for the life of me. I finished it hoping it would become clear in the end, but it did not. Not for me.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm…I really wanted to like this book more than I did.

It’s well-written; I just didn’t like any of the characters. The degree of self-absorption and the objectification of others was appalling.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fawn Parker has some great writing skills and I was enjoying this book at the start, however for me it soon became confusing and tedious. The protagonist (Fawn) had some real compulsive and harmful issues she was struggling with - body dysmorphia which resulted in bulimia and anorexia, a self identified drinking problem and sexual confusion. She arrives late to the farmhouse where her mother is/was living with 3 other women (including Fawn's aunt) after her mother dies from MAID. She talks about knowing her mother and being close to her however her relationship with her mother was quite dysfunctional which it also seemed to be with her father and a sister that is mentioned but never shows. Thus the struggle with grief? Who was she close to? Did she even feel loved?

Does the whole novel take place in one day? It appears so and if so I've never known so much to be happening all in one day. Rather overwhelming. I found none of the characters with substance or to be relatable including Fawn.

The women who lived with her mother Elaine seem more concerned about the Will and being able to keep the house that was originally Elaine's family home. They practice misandry and refuse to talk to men. This is reflected humorously when Fawn finds a PHD student in their yard working on a project. When he tells Fawn that he knocked on the door and asked if he could come onto the property, and she asks him what they said he just stands there still. She then realizes that was their reply.

'I am a perfect victim. The women in my family are all this way. They have told stories of sexual violence, of women being pushed down staircases, of men bringing home sex workers and sleeping with them in their marital beds while their wives cook dinner downstairs. These are the formative fables of the childhood. Nothing ever happened to me. I simply learned victimhood as a way of life' Sexual confusion - no kidding!

I'll give it 4 stars for writing style and 2 stars for the story which averages to a 3. For me it had so much potential that just didn't arrive. Maybe I just didn't get it or that style of writing.

[Jack Daniel Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why isn't this a die cut cover? It really ought to be a die cut cover. I have other thoughts, of course--namely that following the death of Alice Munro, Fawn Parker may be a contender for Canada's greatest writer of fiction. This book is immensely felt and inventive, and when compared to her first novel dealing with depicting the loss of a mother (Set Point) I think her ability to wrestle with the subject has deepened/matured (which is not to say that I think her early work isn't worth reading, Looking Good and Having a Good Time and the award-winning short story "Wunderhorse II" still rank as some of her best offerings, don't sleep on those).

It's worth noting for the sake of JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY (even though this isn't my [hairflip] popular online blog Discordia Review but instead my GoodReads account that almost nobody reads) that I've known Fawn personally for years, but I also generally avoid reviewing the work of friends on GoodReads because I don't want to have to awkwardly give a friend's work less than five stars, which is something I reserve for work I think is truly great and (no offense everybody) I don't think many of my friends have produced work that meets that standard. But this is one! And it's even up for the Governor General's Award! Also if you Google "Canadian novelists" Fawn comes up in the list.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

so disjointed, so awkward, so unmaneuverable. there is no narrative flow. the footnotes are exceedingly disruptive without any contribution but irritating disruption. it felt like reading an academic's attempt at fiction, printed for review, with scribbles for future edits, full of references and connections to their unrelated research- in short, arrogant, navel-gazing, self-important, and flat. an experiement of the 90s: what if I pretended to write a novel, used my own name for the protagonist, and messed about with the structure, altering the very fabric of the form? yawn. it's just sooo awful.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book feels like an exhausting and disorienting journey. Written in a style that mimics the unspoken dialogue of a rambling mind, it’s a narrative that constantly veers off course, difficult to grasp in its fluidity and scattered nature.
It's almost like reading the disjointed thoughts of someone, constant shifts in focus, fragmented memories, and tangents.

For some, this disjointedness could be a reflection of mental health, but for others, it may just feel like a frustrating barrier to connection with the story.

[FindingFiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an arc of this, courtesy of Penguin Random House. All thoughts are my own.

Hi, It’s Me, is a book about grief and the struggles of maneuvering that grief alongside already present mental health struggles.

This book is for the weird girlies. Take Crying In H Mart and make it Moshfeg-ish. That’s the best way to describe this.

It felt like watching someone jump over impossibly high hurdles, but then suddenly a ball and chain is strapped on and yet they are still expected to jump over these hurdles.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book by Canadian author Fawn Parker I have read. This novel (not sure if it is partially autobiographical) about a young woman grieving the MAID death of her mother, started off very strong. The writing was creative and very immersive. However, by the 3/4 mark I started being frustrated by the huge gapping holes in the story line. There were too many unanswered questions and the unexpected drop off of the ending left me very disappointed as a reader.

[Jordan Gower · Rating 3 out of 5]

First 3/4 were great. However the last 1/4 was chewy and I had a tough time getting to the end.

Initially I found the footnotes fun and unique, but by the end I found them disruptive and pointless. Overall I struggled to connect, but I enjoyed the way the author writes, as well as the original concept.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible, subtle violence. Such a self-loathing in the narrative. Disjointed and enraging, and pitiful, but it all takes place the day her mother died with MAID, which she missed, because she was late. So it is understandable, and forgivable, to a point. 3.5