Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig

A girl faints in the Toronto subway. Her friends are taken to the hospital with unexplained rashes; they complain about a funny smell in the subway. Swarms of police arrive, and then the hazmat team. Panic ripples through the city, and words like poisoning and terrorism become airborne. Soon, people are collapsing all over the city in subways and streetcars and malls.

Alex was witness to this first episode. He’s a photographer: of injuries and deaths, for his job at the hospital, and of life, in his evening explorations of the city. Alex’s sight is failing, and as he rushes to capture his vision of Toronto on film, he encounters an old girlfriend – the one who shattered his heart in the eighties. But now Susie-Paul is in the midst of her own crisis: her schizophrenic brother is missing, and the streets of Toronto are more hostile than ever.

Maggie Helwig, author of the critically lauded Between Mountains, has fashioned a novel not of bold actions but of small gestures, showing how easy and gentle is the slide into paranoia, and how enormous and terrifying is the slide into love.

Other Formats:

eBook
Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Book description courtesy Coach House Books.

Keep Toronto Reading Festival (April 1 to 30, 2012)

This April, Toronto Public Library invites everyone to celebrate the joy of reading during our annual Keep Toronto Reading Festival. Come out to a wide variety of events taking place at library branches across the city.

As part of the festival, the library is pleased to announce Girls Fall Down, by Maggie Helwig, as our One Book community read. Pick up the book, and then join us in April for readings, discussions and other events that bring this book’s themes to life.