Adult Onset
First edition cover
AuthorAnn-Marie MacDonald
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
Genre
Set inToronto, Ontario, Canada
PublisherAlfred A. Knopf Canada
Publication date
2014
Pages384 (1st edition)
ISBN9780345808271
OCLC875729424
C813/.54
LC ClassPR9199.3.M2985
Websiteannmariemacdonald.com/works/novels/adult-onset/

Adult Onset is a 2014 novel by Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald. Set in The Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, the story centers on one week in the life of a successful writer of young adult fiction, Mary Rose MacKinnon, who finds herself taking care of her two young children while her wife is out of town directing a play. The novel starts with a light tone in describing Mary Rose's new-found solo daily domesticity with her son and daughter. But through a series of flashbacks, "Mister" or "MR" as Mary Rose is known to family and friends, is forced to confront her own repressed abuse as a child. At the center of the family drama is her mother, Dolly, an immigrant child-wife in postwar Canada.

The novel has been translated into five non-English languages and was published in a Braille edition. It was a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in the category of Lesbian Fiction.[1]

Synopsis

The story opens on a Monday in early April with 48-year-old successful young adult novelist Mary Rose MacKinnon having received an email from her father, who had only the day before had an email service installed on his computer. The subject line is "some things really do get better …" which catches MR's attention amid the many unopened messages in her inbox. The content of the note was a compliment from her father regarding Mary Rose and her wife Hilary's video contribution to the It Gets Better Project, in support of LGBTQ youth. In the present, MR's parents are supportive of her lesbianism but that was not always the case. When Mary Rose came out to her mother decades earlier, Dolly's response was that she wished Mary Rose had cancer instead. Mary Rose struggles to find the right words to answer her father's email, while also attending to her daily challenges as the temporarily single mother of a five-year-old son and a feisty two-year-old daughter.

Outwardly, MR appears to have a normal, urban lifestyle as a modern lesbian mother. But lurking underneath is a rage that begins to surface as MR experiences the recurrence of a chronic arm pain that began when she was a child. The adult Mary Rose is not sure whether her pain is real or remembered, and she wonders why her parents did not take her unicameral bone cysts more seriously during her youth. Through a series of flashbacks and a stream-of-consciousness narrative style, mixed with dry humour and witty sarcasm, MR tries to piece together her fractured childhood memories as the third surviving child of Duncan and Dolly MacKinnon. MR's birth was sandwiched between the stillbirth of "The Other Mary Rose" and followed by the death in infancy of "Alexander-Who-Died". MR's childhood was spent with a mother who suffered from severe post-partum depression. MR has recurring memories of being dangled over the balcony of the family's apartment in Germany by her older sister Maureen, which Maureen denies vigorously. As she confronts her blurred memories and the unresolved traumas of her childhood over the course of the week, combined with the frustrations of child rearing, MR edges closer to the brink of causing harm to her own children. By the Sunday of that week, Mary Rose is finally able to answer her father's email.

Subplots involve the differing memories of the same events by siblings and parents, the challenges of long-distance relationships, and the progression of present-day Dolly's dementia.

Development

In an interview where she discussed the 10 years between the publication of her previous novel and Adult Onset and the issue of writer's block, MacDonald stated "My blocks were more that I was writing about somebody who was processing personal shadows, demons from the past, in order not to pass them on to her child, while also trying to care for her elderly parents as best she can. If you haven't processed your own past and your own childhood, if there is any kind of unprocessed demon hanging around, there's nothing like a toddler in your life to bring it springing out."[2]

Adult Onset had its origins as part of a collection of short stories, none of which have been published. The 65-page story "Hello Stranger" also featured the character of Mary Rose MacKinnon; MacDonald described it as "a donor story", which she harvested and "used its organs for Adult Onset".[2]

In a departure from her two previous novels, which were historically-based fiction that required extensive research, Adult Onset was written "in the moments between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. when both of MacDonald's children were safely in the hands of Ontario's educational system".[3] Her youngest child was five years old when MacDonald started writing the book.[4] She said that she didn't have time to do as much research as she did with her earlier works, so instead "I have to work with what I have. I have to be able to write this book from what's already inside of me."[3] MacDonald said further "I really did use my own psyche, emotional, experiential tissues. I donated it all because that's what I had to work with."[3]

There are many similarities between MacDonald's real life and that of main character Mary Rose MacKinnon. Both were born in West Germany, with a father in the Canadian military and a Lebanese mother. Both are lesbian mothers with a wife who is a playwright and theatre director, and with two children and a dog. Both are writers, although the character of Mary Rose is an author of young adult fiction, while MacDonald's writings tackle more adult subject matter.[5] Both experienced rejection by their parents after revealing their lesbianism. Both have taken over the domestic and child-rearing responsibilities within the family, due to their partner working out of town, which has resulted in both putting their writing careers on pause. Both experienced childhood traumas that resurface and demand attention and analysis.[6] MacDonald told a reviewer that Adult Onset "was a novel that demanded to be written, a catharsis of sorts in a coming to terms with her own past".[6]

Because so much of the story is drawn from MacDonald's real life, including her painful childhood memories, she responded to a question of self-censorship with "At a certain point, when I knew I'd be working with material that would be recognizable to people who are close to me, my loved ones, my parents who are so elderly now…I did talk to my parents. I told them what I was working on and said 'You may recognize some things. I am drawing on darker aspects of our history together, drawing on my own life to create a universal story that hopefully other people will recognize themselves in. In order to do that, I need to draw on some very personal stuff because that's my job.' My father responded by saying, 'And you do your job so well.' That said, this book is still not the easiest thing in the world for him."[2]

MacDonald has said she considers Adult Onset to the final installment in a trilogy[7] that reflects her life "in a parallel world".[8]

Publication history

Critical reception

Reviews of the novel at the time of publication were generally positive.

The New York Times published two reviews. Novelist Maggie Pouncey described the work in a "Sunday Book Review" as MacDonald's "big, troubling, brave new novel", and concludes with "Adult Onset puts MacDonald's readers in the interesting and uncomfortable position of liking someone who is occasionally awful. Then again, who can't relate to that?"[20] In a shorter review written a week earlier, reviewer Carmela Ciuraru said "This material might have gone too far in the direction of either soap opera or sitcom, but Ms. MacDonald strikes just the right tone as she exposes the brutal undercurrents of domestic life."[21]

A review by Mark Medley in The Globe and Mail said it is "a novel about difficulties, especially those between parents and their children…. It is not a horror novel, but I'm a 33-year-old man with no kids, and Adult Onset scared the hell out of me."[8]

Maclean's Brian Bethune described the book as "an intricate, gripping novel that is also a master class in turning the personal into the universal through art".[22]

Although mostly positive about the book, Emily Donaldson's review in The Toronto Star said that the work is "stymied" by "its unnecessarily high thread count" because too much of the book is spent "on the dreck and dross of parenting … and on establishing Mary Rose's urban liberal bona fides".[23]

A review by Amity Gaige for The Guardian described the novel as "a powerful psychological gyre" and that the book's tone "is frank and acidly funny … and the writing is utterly engaging and complex".[24]

Toronto Sun reviewer Nancy Schiefer described the novel as "a tour de force in emotional resonance, incisive observation and good story telling" and concludes with "the novel is superb, a fine blending of fact and fiction, of remembered incident and forgotten history, a wonderfully written treatise on the power of the past to impinge on the present".[6]

A review by Heather Seggel in Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide concludes that the book "is a contemporary slice of life that speaks to how far we've come – as women, as lesbians, as parents – while acknowledging how often we impede our own progress".[25]

Accolades

References

  1. 1 2 "Lambda Literary Awards Finalists & Winners". Lambda Literary. n.d. Archived from the original on October 23, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 Cooper, Beverley (Spring–Summer 2015). "Ann-Marie MacDonald: harvesting the personal". Humber Literary Review. 2 (1). Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 Ferguson, Michelle (October 15, 2014). "MacDonald's new novel revealing: An evening with Banff Distinguished Author highlights Wordfest 2014 weekend". Bow Valley Crag & Canyon. Alberta, Canada. p. Entertainment section, 29.
  4. ↑ Macneill, Kim Hart (December 30, 2014). "Mining the past with Ann-Marie MacDonald". Atlantic Books Today. Archived from the original on November 27, 2020. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  5. ↑ Dundas, Deborah (September 27, 2014). "The Truth behind the story: Adult Onset may be fiction, but the novel is not so different from the author's life". The Toronto Star. Toronto, Ontario. p. E1.
  6. 1 2 3 Schiefer, Nancy (October 18, 2014). "Ann-Marie MacDonald revisits painful past in 'Adult Onset'". Toronto Sun. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on October 23, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  7. ↑ Kenny, Amy (October 25, 2014). "Adult Onset: MacDonald's memoir of a parallel life". The Hamilton Spectator. Hamilton, Ontario. p. G2.
  8. 1 2 Medley, Mark (October 4, 2014). "Self-reflections on parenthood". The Globe and Mail (Ontario ed.). Toronto, Ontario. p. R15.
  9. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2014). Adult Onset. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780345808271. LCCN 2014-472862. OCLC 875729424.
  10. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2014). Adult Onset. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780345808295. OCLC 875729378.
  11. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). Adult Onset (First U.S. ed.). Portland, Oregon: Tin House Books. ISBN 9781941040058. LCCN 2014-40243. OCLC 896126799.
  12. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). Adult Onset. London: Sceptre. ISBN 9781473610132. OCLC 899704755.
  13. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). Adult Onset (Unabridged ed.). New York: Random House Audio. ISBN 9780147519528. OCLC 906026001.
  14. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). L'air Adulte: Roman [Adult Onset] (in French). Translated by Saint-Martin, Lori; Gagné, Paul. Montréal: Flammarion Québec. ISBN 9782890776821. OCLC 913612439.
  15. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). L'età Adulta: Romanzo [Adult Onset] (in Italian). Translated by Granato, Giovanna. Milano: Mondadori. ISBN 9788804652311. OCLC 935667080.
  16. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2017). Un Mal Secreto [Adult Onset] (in Spanish). Translated by Buil, Ana Mata. Barcelona: Lumen. ISBN 9788426403810. OCLC 986707579.
  17. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). In Haar Lichaam Besloten [Adult Onset] (in Dutch). Translated by Limburg, Inger; van Rooijen, Lucie. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar. ISBN 9789038899268. OCLC 901524580.
  18. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). Mary Rose Postanawia Żyć [Adult Onset] (in Polish). Translated by Kiełbas, Jolanta. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo W.A.B. - Grupa Wydawnicza Foksal. ISBN 9788328023529. OCLC 1036355954.
  19. ↑ MacDonald, Ann-Marie (2015). Adult Onset (Braille ed.). Toronto: CNIB. ISBN 9780616839942. OCLC 1012144269.
  20. ↑ Pouncey, Maggie (May 5, 2015). "'Adult Onset,' by Ann-Marie MacDonald". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  21. ↑ Ciuraru, Carmela (April 29, 2015). "Reviews: New Books from Steven Millhauser, Per Petterson and More". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  22. ↑ Bethune, Brian (September 27, 2014). "Caught in her own hall of mirrors". Maclean's. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on February 8, 2018. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  23. ↑ Donaldson, Emily (October 10, 2014). "Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald: Review". Toronto Star. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on October 11, 2014. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  24. ↑ Gaige, Amity (28 March 2015). "Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald review: an acidly funny portrait of parenthood". The Guardian. London, England. Archived from the original on 25 October 2019. Retrieved March 5, 2021.
  25. ↑ Seggel, Heather (September–October 2015). "A Week in the Life". The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. 22 (5): 44. Archived from the original on 2021-03-18. Retrieved 2021-03-13.
  26. ↑ Robertson, Becky (June 10, 2015). "Miriam Toews, Sean Michaels among 2015 Canadian Authors Association literary awards finalists". Quill & Quire. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on June 6, 2017. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
  27. ↑ Robertson, Becky (March 5, 2015). "Sixteen Canadian authors nominated for Lamdba Literary Awards". Quill & Quire. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on August 8, 2020. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
  28. ↑ Bethune, Brian (January 7, 2015). "Bestsellers, week of Jan. 7". Maclean's. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on October 28, 2015. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  29. ↑ Bethune, Brian (October 23, 2014). "Maclean's Bestsellers: from the Nov. 3 issue". Maclean's. Toronto, Ontario. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
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