Mary Rose MacKinnon has agreed to be a stay-at-home mother while her partner’s career takes centre stage. As she balances childcare with the relentless needs of her own ageing parents, into the hilarities of full-on domesticity seeps a feeling of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How did those scissors wind up in her toddler’s hands? When a flare-up of a forgotten childhood illness compels her to rethink her own upbringing, Mary Rose’s world threatens to unravel and the spectre of violence raises its head. With biting humour and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, so powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken.

‘Ann-Marie MacDonald captures the dark hilarity of parenthood like nobody else. I gulped down Adult Onset in a single day.’ Emma Donoghue

‘A complex, troubling novel that cuts with surgical precision into the sinew and muscle of family life.‘ - Sarah Waters