Under the Visible Life

Kim Echlin lives in Toronto. She is the author of Elephant Winter, Dagmar's Daughter, Inanna: From the Myths of Ancient Sumer, and The Disappeared, which was published in seventeen languages, nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction.

I lost count of how many times I was caught off-guard by the poignancy of this novel. Every page pits hope against despair. Every page screams, fight for your dreams, you are lost without them. This story of motherhood and friendship, anchored by two extraordinary heroines, will stay with me for a long time. -- Khaled Hosseini This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. Quill and Quire This novel is a love song to music itself, the true and requited love of these gifted musicians' lives Globe & Mail Echlin has created two women who practically explode off the page with their desire, talent and brilliance. They are both incredibly flawed, making all the wrong choices, falling for difficult men, and raising kids on messy kitchens floors-and yet, like most women, they find a way to make life work through the chaos. The result is a book that has the rhythm, cadence and sexuality of a piano tune played in a little theatre on the wrong side of a big town. Heather O'Neill The novel carries readers through an impressive cavalcade of personal and societal changes. Echlin is that rare writer who can evoke the joy of playing and listening to music without resorting to overly abstract language or fuzzy metaphors. Toronto Star Review