Marina Endicott began her career as an actor and director in Ontario and then moved to England, where she began to write fiction. She now divides her time between Edmonton and Toronto. Her first novel Open Arms was short-listed for the Amazon First Novel award. Her second, Good to a Fault, was a finalist for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and a CBC Canada Reads book, and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada/Caribbean. The Little Shadows, longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was also short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Close to Hugh, the book she will be presenting at Wordfest has been longlisted for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Close to Hugh

A fall from a ladder leaves Hugh with a fractured vision of the pain suffered by all those close to him – dying parents, shaky marriages, failure of every kind. His friends are one missed ladder-rung from going under emotionally, physically, and financially. Somebody’s going to have to fix them all, and it’s probably got to be Hugh. As complicated bonds form and break in texts and ticks on multiplying media, the desires, terrors, and revelations of adolescence are mirrored in the second adolescence of the adults. Close to Hugh revels in these two parallel worlds, in the puns and coincidences that attend every generation’s coming of age, or second coming.

2015 Reader Faves: 49th Shelf

CBC Books: On abandoned workouts, stubborn knots and her most lovable character

Globe and Mail review

National Post feature

Chatelaine review

Maclean’s review