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!

I think this is objectively a good book, really beautifully written and has a great story, but I found it so hard to connect to this character that under basically any other circumstance I would've felt a really kindred spirit towards. Interesting one

Synopsis:
Shortly after her mother’s death, Fawn arrives at the farmhouse. While there, she will stay in her mother’s bedroom in the house that is also occupied by four other 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.
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, invoking the physicality and painful embodiment of terminal illness with astonishing precision and emotional force. This mesmerizing, devastating novel asks: Why must it be this way?

After reading the above synopsis of the book, you might have a multitude of reactions/emotions.
Parker writes a beautiful, daring book on love, family and grief. She writes about mental health issues and illness with such familiar conviction. Parker’s ability to help you feel with the narrator as she tells this story is spot on. I underlined/highlighted sentences and paragraphs to come back to. I never do that to a book. So many things to come back to. A book you will reread!


This book arrives on September 17th, 2024. Don’t miss it.

This seems incredible from what I have read so far, so much so that I will wait to read the rest in print because the formatting is such a mess on my Kindle.