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A Globe and Mail Fall Book of 2025An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness.Between writing a weekly column for The Hype Report and managing her mood stabilizers, Gloria navigates a series of quasi-relationships while commiserating with her best friend about dating apps and dick pics, married men and questionable boundaries. But when she makes a glib pass at Daryn, a stranger on a subway platform crowded with young anti-immigration protesters, and finds him waiting for her outside her health club a couple of days later, a surprising curiosity leads her not to consider a restraining order, but to talk to him.
Claiming she wants to interview him for an article on the incel movement, Gloria meets Daryn for coffee and soon invites him back to her apartment—where his earnestness and painfully restrained desire inspire her to dominate him sexually. As their physical relationship intensifies, so does their emotional connection, and Gloria can’t shake the sense that she’s headed in a dangerous direction.
An electric examination of sex and love, self-loathing, and twenty-first century loneliness,
Self Care is a devastating novel about women and men, what they want and what they say they want, and the violent tension between the two.
About the author
Russell Smith is the author of twelve previous books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation. His fiction has been nominated for every major Canadian award, including the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Amazon First Novel Award. A journalist and cultural commentator, his nonfiction has appeared in the
New York Review of Books, the
Globe and Mail,
The Walrus, and elsewhere. An acquiring editor at Dundurn Press, Smith lives in Toronto.
Summary
An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness.
Between Daily Self Care, the weekly column she writes for the website The Hype Report, and managing her mood stabilizers, Gloria navigates her quasi-relationship with Florian and commiserates with Isabel, her best friend, about dating apps and dick pics, married men and questionable boundaries. But when she makes a glib pass at Darin, a stranger wearing a sad face pin on a subway platform crowded with young male protestors leaving an anti-immigration rally, and finds him waiting for her outside her health club the next day, a surprising curiosity leads her not to consider a restraining order, but to talk to him.
Claiming she wants to interview him for an article she’s writing on the incel movement, Gloria meets Darin for coffee and soon invites him back to her apartment—where his strange earnestness and painfully restrained desire inspire her to dominate him sexually. As their sexual relationship intensifies, so does their emotional connection, and Gloria can’t shake her sense that she’s headed in a dangerous direction. An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness, Self-Care is a devastating novel about all the ways we try to cope—with ourselves, and with each other.
Foreword
- Print run: 5,000
- Co-op available
- Advance reader copies
- Edelweiss digital review copies
- North American TV & radio campaign
- National print campaign
- Online and social media campaign
- Excerpts in Lit Hub, Electric Lit
