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Doubles
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Expected 1 May 26Doubles takes place in 1968 in an institution for troubled youth, and is told from the perspective of a brilliant, spunky, 12-year-old girl who is obsessed with math. Engagingly written and often funny, this novella explores how a sensitive young teenager changes over a six-month period from a polite, quiet “good girl” into a delinquent. Although set in the past, Doubles has direct relevance to today, with our recently heightened awareness of the harsh reality in some of our residential institutions during that era (including for Indigenous children, but not only).
68 pages, Paperback
Expected publication May 1, 2026
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5 or 4.75 rounded up
For such a short story, this one packs a punch. It wasn't a shocking, twisty, gasp-out-loud sort of unsettling feeling that washed over me as I read, but more so a sink-into your skin feeling. It was like an insect burrowing, leaving you feeling itchy as it travels through you slowly.
Following the young narrator through written answers to prompts and then through her own diary/journal entries was engaging, and I thought it did a great job of allowing information about her character, situation, family, and experiences be 'told' and 'shown' in a good balance, seeming natural through how she is writing/responding because of the execution. I did find myself doing a double-take at times because some of the jumps in her focus while writing made me forget 'where'/'when' she was at a given time while writing, but that was probably just me as a reader (it's normal in journaling to jump around in your thoughts, time, and memories, I just struggled personally while reading it as a story).
In addition to the excellent structure and writing itself (I often struggle with children's POVs, but didn't with this one!), the story itself was resonating. It's a subtle slow-burn that delivers on its promises of peeking into residential institutions. My heart ached for the narrator as her mental health continued to devolve; going from having so much hope and optimism for her future, for 'escape' and 'rescue,' even just for excitement over learning and math, to being numb, continuously let-down, and dejected was heartbreaking.
The way her and the other children are treated by the counselors at the institution sparked a little flame in me - this might be because I could relate a bit. While definitely not the same situation (her reasons for being in the institution being related to her family), I've spent time in an inpatient setting for mental health, an IOP program, and a residential home in the past. I was 'only' in each for about one month and was incredibly affected by the treatment and experience[s] of being there. I cannot imagine enduring it for 6 months, as our narrator does in this story. Yet, having had these experiences, I think the story does a great job with reflecting the reality - not only the treatment of children at the hands of counselors, but also the mental effects of being there. Just as the narrator experiences, you lose yourself, lose hope, lose sight of feeling loved, lose trust, lose excitement and enjoyment for literally anything. The narrator sees the 'truth' of some of the other children there, too, that the counselors don't (or won't) see/acknowledge. Again, this is the reality. That is why this one sticks with me so heavily. I could see myself in it.
The ending of the story sat with me and made me feel both a sense of vengeance on behalf of the narrator and other children, as well as a bleak feeling of unease. It was the unease of their situation, their experiences, and their slow decline of who they were. Because of the institution, they become shells of who they once were.
I think the narrator's intentional lack of a name is poignant. I saw it as a reflection of her experience being applicable to 'any' child in a similar situation; it allows readers to see themselves as her. More than that, I think it reflects how she loses herself. Again, she becomes a different person, in a sense. She's a shell of who she was, nameless and 'just another one' in the counselors' eyes.
I think this is an impactful story, and I'd definitely recommend it!
*Thanks to NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the early copy to read and review.
For such a short story, this one packs a punch. It wasn't a shocking, twisty, gasp-out-loud sort of unsettling feeling that washed over me as I read, but more so a sink-into your skin feeling. It was like an insect burrowing, leaving you feeling itchy as it travels through you slowly.
Following the young narrator through written answers to prompts and then through her own diary/journal entries was engaging, and I thought it did a great job of allowing information about her character, situation, family, and experiences be 'told' and 'shown' in a good balance, seeming natural through how she is writing/responding because of the execution. I did find myself doing a double-take at times because some of the jumps in her focus while writing made me forget 'where'/'when' she was at a given time while writing, but that was probably just me as a reader (it's normal in journaling to jump around in your thoughts, time, and memories, I just struggled personally while reading it as a story).
In addition to the excellent structure and writing itself (I often struggle with children's POVs, but didn't with this one!), the story itself was resonating. It's a subtle slow-burn that delivers on its promises of peeking into residential institutions. My heart ached for the narrator as her mental health continued to devolve; going from having so much hope and optimism for her future, for 'escape' and 'rescue,' even just for excitement over learning and math, to being numb, continuously let-down, and dejected was heartbreaking.
The way her and the other children are treated by the counselors at the institution sparked a little flame in me - this might be because I could relate a bit. While definitely not the same situation (her reasons for being in the institution being related to her family), I've spent time in an inpatient setting for mental health, an IOP program, and a residential home in the past. I was 'only' in each for about one month and was incredibly affected by the treatment and experience[s] of being there. I cannot imagine enduring it for 6 months, as our narrator does in this story. Yet, having had these experiences, I think the story does a great job with reflecting the reality - not only the treatment of children at the hands of counselors, but also the mental effects of being there. Just as the narrator experiences, you lose yourself, lose hope, lose sight of feeling loved, lose trust, lose excitement and enjoyment for literally anything. The narrator sees the 'truth' of some of the other children there, too, that the counselors don't (or won't) see/acknowledge. Again, this is the reality. That is why this one sticks with me so heavily. I could see myself in it.
The ending of the story sat with me and made me feel both a sense of vengeance on behalf of the narrator and other children, as well as a bleak feeling of unease. It was the unease of their situation, their experiences, and their slow decline of who they were. Because of the institution, they become shells of who they once were.
I think the narrator's intentional lack of a name is poignant. I saw it as a reflection of her experience being applicable to 'any' child in a similar situation; it allows readers to see themselves as her. More than that, I think it reflects how she loses herself. Again, she becomes a different person, in a sense. She's a shell of who she was, nameless and 'just another one' in the counselors' eyes.
I think this is an impactful story, and I'd definitely recommend it!
*Thanks to NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the early copy to read and review.
November 16, 2025
Note: I was given a ARC for review.
Doubles is a sixty-page novella, a quick read, something you can start and finish in a few hours. Once started, you’ll probably rip through it like I did. The delightfully clearheaded, funny narrator pulls you through her story, tugging at your heartstrings while you hope, hope, hope, like she does, comprehending that the probability is almost zero that these hopes will be realized, as she does.
Written as diary entries, though we start with six questions a counsellor asks the unnamed narrator at the group home she’s in. The narrator’s twelve years old. She loves math; like, she relates everything in her life to numbers. When she grows up, she wants to be a prime number, for example. Her dad calls her a zero—which she’s OK with, in the way we’re all OK with whatever we’ve been told about ourselves in the safety of our private thoughts, or journals.
As Doubles progresses, we piece together why this youngster is at Valleyview Children’s Farm, even if she does not quite understand it herself and just wants to go home. Valleyview is viciously uninspiring. The kids have no school lessons; the library has only one math textbook, which our narrator works her way through in no time. When she requests volume two, it never arrives: it costs too much.
She and her fellow prisoners—she never sees herself and her fellow children’s farm denizens as anything but prisoners—can’t leave; if they run away, they get solitary confinement. But at least at a prison, they'd get schooling and things to do aside from leafing through old car and fashion magazines or staring at Disney TV. The narrator and her fellow children’s farm captives sit together in a common room, never allowed to be away from the watchful (or not so watchful) eyes of their counsellors. Other kids stare at their hands, slap themselves in the face or attempt pranks for which they get tackled to the ground and, you guessed it, hauled off to solitary confinement. Towards the end of the book, the narrator gets pretty good at staring herself.
Her future looks bleak. If only she could get that math textbook, and keep studying!
Reading Doubles, you get a sense of how kids in 1960s child services systems had basically zero chance of becoming anything other than, if they were lucky, the working poor. You see the dangers around Doubles’ narrator, and how there’s no way she’s going to escape all of them; for one, she’s too young to recognize most.
The ending is perfect and, in a way, redemptive. Hopeful. Some people go through fire and come out solid, strong and untouchable. They go in a fraction and come out a prime number.
This novella is fantastic: well-written, great pacing and tension, with a sharp and unwittingly witty narrator.
Doubles is a sixty-page novella, a quick read, something you can start and finish in a few hours. Once started, you’ll probably rip through it like I did. The delightfully clearheaded, funny narrator pulls you through her story, tugging at your heartstrings while you hope, hope, hope, like she does, comprehending that the probability is almost zero that these hopes will be realized, as she does.
Written as diary entries, though we start with six questions a counsellor asks the unnamed narrator at the group home she’s in. The narrator’s twelve years old. She loves math; like, she relates everything in her life to numbers. When she grows up, she wants to be a prime number, for example. Her dad calls her a zero—which she’s OK with, in the way we’re all OK with whatever we’ve been told about ourselves in the safety of our private thoughts, or journals.
As Doubles progresses, we piece together why this youngster is at Valleyview Children’s Farm, even if she does not quite understand it herself and just wants to go home. Valleyview is viciously uninspiring. The kids have no school lessons; the library has only one math textbook, which our narrator works her way through in no time. When she requests volume two, it never arrives: it costs too much.
She and her fellow prisoners—she never sees herself and her fellow children’s farm denizens as anything but prisoners—can’t leave; if they run away, they get solitary confinement. But at least at a prison, they'd get schooling and things to do aside from leafing through old car and fashion magazines or staring at Disney TV. The narrator and her fellow children’s farm captives sit together in a common room, never allowed to be away from the watchful (or not so watchful) eyes of their counsellors. Other kids stare at their hands, slap themselves in the face or attempt pranks for which they get tackled to the ground and, you guessed it, hauled off to solitary confinement. Towards the end of the book, the narrator gets pretty good at staring herself.
Her future looks bleak. If only she could get that math textbook, and keep studying!
Reading Doubles, you get a sense of how kids in 1960s child services systems had basically zero chance of becoming anything other than, if they were lucky, the working poor. You see the dangers around Doubles’ narrator, and how there’s no way she’s going to escape all of them; for one, she’s too young to recognize most.
The ending is perfect and, in a way, redemptive. Hopeful. Some people go through fire and come out solid, strong and untouchable. They go in a fraction and come out a prime number.
This novella is fantastic: well-written, great pacing and tension, with a sharp and unwittingly witty narrator.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Nora Gold’s intriguing novella Doubles contains a number of compelling double dilemmas. The young woman at the helm of the story is nameless—and for good reason: her anonymity makes her emblematic of her time, place, and circumstances. She lives amid the turbulence of 1968, when the world feels unmoored and her family has fallen apart. She reveals just enough to draw us in: She lives in an institution called Valleyview Children’s Farm, her mother is dead, and her father’s physical violence has led to her removal from her home. Her younger brother and her grandmother are still at home and need her, yet her sister, the “good” daughter, has become pregnant and fled home to escape their father, who claims she is his favorite. These family and societal complexities create a compelling tension that carries the reader forward.
Doubles unfolds as a riveting stream of consciousness: the inner landscape of a precocious, sensitive, math-loving pre-teen searching for identity and meaning. The questions she asks, and the conclusions she reaches, are insightful and often moving. She is fascinated by contradictions – for example, that World War II was supposed to be the war that ended all wars, but didn’t, that she admires bravery yet her own fears often hold her back. Sketched beautifully and vividly by Gold, this girl reminds us of the complexity of life as experienced by a sensitive young person faced with its many paradoxes, including the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the adults in charge.
Doubles invites readers into the deeply engaging and often humorous world of a remarkably perceptive pre-teen, and it offers, through Gold’s powerful and unsentimental writing about childhood, insights, truths, and some tantalizing pleasures.
Doubles unfolds as a riveting stream of consciousness: the inner landscape of a precocious, sensitive, math-loving pre-teen searching for identity and meaning. The questions she asks, and the conclusions she reaches, are insightful and often moving. She is fascinated by contradictions – for example, that World War II was supposed to be the war that ended all wars, but didn’t, that she admires bravery yet her own fears often hold her back. Sketched beautifully and vividly by Gold, this girl reminds us of the complexity of life as experienced by a sensitive young person faced with its many paradoxes, including the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the adults in charge.
Doubles invites readers into the deeply engaging and often humorous world of a remarkably perceptive pre-teen, and it offers, through Gold’s powerful and unsentimental writing about childhood, insights, truths, and some tantalizing pleasures.
Review of advance copy received from Author
"All I've learned in this place so far is how to stay out of the way of crazy people."
A precocious, curious, and clever twelve-year-old girl is put into a home for delinquent children—much to her dismay and confusion. She's a math prodigy and sees the world in numbers, which is how she attempts to make sense of her surroundings and the aspects of her life not in her control.
The novella unfolds as a writing exercise an instructor gives the girl in which she must answer questions. Over the course of the story, how she came to be there is revealed, as is the devastating effect being there has on her mind. I grew quite attached to her from the very first answer she gave—chuckling throughout at her wit and spunk. Nora Gold is a masterfully poetic writer, deep diving into uncomfortable themes—within this 68-page novella—with literary precision, showcasing depth and humor alike.
DOUBLES is an endearing yet heartbreaking tale about a bright, good-natured child who is displaced into an institutional system and irrevocably affected for the worse. Though this story is set in 1968, its message about disaffected youth is timeless, relevant, and poignant. Expect to read this in one engaging and captivating sitting. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, you'll hope, and ultimately you'll be happy you spent time with this plucky girl and her worldview!
____
Thank you Nora Gold for my gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
A precocious, curious, and clever twelve-year-old girl is put into a home for delinquent children—much to her dismay and confusion. She's a math prodigy and sees the world in numbers, which is how she attempts to make sense of her surroundings and the aspects of her life not in her control.
The novella unfolds as a writing exercise an instructor gives the girl in which she must answer questions. Over the course of the story, how she came to be there is revealed, as is the devastating effect being there has on her mind. I grew quite attached to her from the very first answer she gave—chuckling throughout at her wit and spunk. Nora Gold is a masterfully poetic writer, deep diving into uncomfortable themes—within this 68-page novella—with literary precision, showcasing depth and humor alike.
DOUBLES is an endearing yet heartbreaking tale about a bright, good-natured child who is displaced into an institutional system and irrevocably affected for the worse. Though this story is set in 1968, its message about disaffected youth is timeless, relevant, and poignant. Expect to read this in one engaging and captivating sitting. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, you'll hope, and ultimately you'll be happy you spent time with this plucky girl and her worldview!
____
Thank you Nora Gold for my gifted copy. All opinions are my own.
January 22, 2026
This was a quiet but impactful read that follows a 12-year-old slowly revealing who she really is as the story unfolds and she begins to unravel. I loved the question and answer and diary format. It felt intimate and immediate, capturing her voice at that moment in time. Experiencing the complexities of life through the eyes of someone on the edge of adolescence was both heartbreaking and insightful, especially her obsession with numbers as something predictable in a life she can’t control. The slow descent brought on by isolation, grief, and the loss of self was unsettling in the best way, making this a layered story that truly lingers.
Thank you to Literary Press Group of Canada for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Thank you to Literary Press Group of Canada for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.25
Going in, I kept wondering if she was in jail or detention. I was not prepared for how brutal the environment actually was. The author captures a 12 year old voice so well that I forgot I was reading fiction. Everything is filtered through her logic, her humor, her confusion, and it makes the cruelty feel even sharper. This place is supposed to protect children, yet it reads like a prison. That contrast is haunting. Set in 1968, but it does not feel distant. I do not know what the system looks like now, but I found myself hoping, almost pleading, that it is better than what these kids endured.
Thank you NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the ARC!
Going in, I kept wondering if she was in jail or detention. I was not prepared for how brutal the environment actually was. The author captures a 12 year old voice so well that I forgot I was reading fiction. Everything is filtered through her logic, her humor, her confusion, and it makes the cruelty feel even sharper. This place is supposed to protect children, yet it reads like a prison. That contrast is haunting. Set in 1968, but it does not feel distant. I do not know what the system looks like now, but I found myself hoping, almost pleading, that it is better than what these kids endured.
Thank you NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Received ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review
This novella had the substance of a full-length novel. I read it in one sitting. The question and answer structure kept me interested and itching to turn the page. There was an endearing stream of consciousness that felt believable from a gifted 12 year old, while heavier topics were addressed mindfully through her lack of knowledge and ensuing curiosity. I felt a range of emotions with the main character, from frustration to humor to sadness. The references to real events were weaved seamlessly and I loved the recognition of the teachers' impact on her life despite her trauma. Doubles is a novella for readers of all ages. It tells a cohesive story but leaves enough to interpretation to inspire thought long after it is finished.
This novella had the substance of a full-length novel. I read it in one sitting. The question and answer structure kept me interested and itching to turn the page. There was an endearing stream of consciousness that felt believable from a gifted 12 year old, while heavier topics were addressed mindfully through her lack of knowledge and ensuing curiosity. I felt a range of emotions with the main character, from frustration to humor to sadness. The references to real events were weaved seamlessly and I loved the recognition of the teachers' impact on her life despite her trauma. Doubles is a novella for readers of all ages. It tells a cohesive story but leaves enough to interpretation to inspire thought long after it is finished.
November 18, 2025
A very interesting way of telling a story, in a series of questions and answers, then as journal entries. A 12 year old girl is removed from her home "for her safety", but Valleyview Home is more of a prison. It's the gradual depersonalization of the unnamed narrator that is fascinating to read/experience. Nora Gold is a wonderful writer.
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January 25, 20264 stars; review to come May 2026
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