The Adult

By: Bronwyn Fischer

Narrated by: Emma Love

An addictively gripping queer coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exactly who they are. She reads advice listicles and watches videos online and thinks about how to fit in, how to really become someone, whoever that might be.

And then she meets Nora, an older woman who takes an unexpected interest in her, and is drawn unstoppably into Nora’s orbit. She begins spending more and more of her time off campus at Nora’s perfect, tidy home. Natalie lies to her floormates about her absence, inventing a fake off-campus boyfriend, and carefully protects this sacred, adult relationship. This only deepens her obsession, even as she realizes Nora is hiding something. As the secrets multiply and the intensity of the romance threatens to overwhelm her, Natalie realizes that the new, adult identity she had imagined for herself is far from the one she’s actually growing into.

Propelled by atmospheric, electric prose, The Adult is about sex, yearning, poetry, and trying to find yourself in the expectations of others—and ultimately finding parts of yourself despite that. For readers of Michelle Hart and Alyssa Songsiridej, Bronwyn Fischer is an immensely talented new writer to watch.

Critic reviews

“All-consuming. The Adult has it all: betrayal, the intensity of inexperienced queer infatuation, and a perceptive and comic voice. A bright and poignant coming-of-age story that will leave you thinking, 'I hope Bronwyn Fischer writes more!’”
—Emily Austin, author of Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead

"A haunting tale of love, heartbreak, and deceit. In precise, lyrical prose, Bronwyn Fischer captures Natalie’s growing pains in all their hilarity, devastation, and piercing tenderness. This is an electric debut."—Antonia Angress, author of Sirens & Muses

“Brilliant, a true original.”—Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of National Book Critics Circle Award finalist How to Pronounce Knife

“Bronwyn Fischer’s The Adult is a gorgeous daydream of a novel. In her immersive and lyrical prose, Fischer unravels a stunning portrait of a young woman’s queer sexual awakening. A tender and sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age story, The Adult nevertheless shows us how profoundly we can grow when we move past shame and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to love and desire. I adore this book!”—Jennifer Savran Kelly, author of Endpapers

“[Reading The Adult], I enter a beautiful and beguiling world, in which Fischer’s sentences do what the best writing does: alter my way of seeing. The novel offers a deeply embodied sense of being eighteen in a new place, even as the narrator longs simultaneously to step into a new self. The unexpected perils and complexities of her journey are rendered with utmost specificity, offered to the reader with verve, heartbreak and comedy. This is the debut of an utterly original new voice."—Catherine Bush, author of Blaze Island

“This novel is that rare thing that combines profound feeling with the cool detachment and sharp insight of deep intelligence. A coming of age story, a school story, a coming out story, a morally dubious love story and a comic tragedy of modern manners, distractions and disastrous miscalculations, The Adult looks at moving to the city, finding love, finding sex, thinking you are older than you are, watching idiosyncratic videos on YouTube while having your heart broken, and getting out of your depth.”—Kate Cayley, playwright, poet, and author of How You Were Born, winner of the 2015 Trillium Book Award

Poetic queer coming of age

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is lovely, the story is bittersweet and relatable, the author's voice is strong and true. The performance is spot-on. It made me remember just how unclear and unsteady everything is when you're in your late teens. Sure, at times it's a little predictable but just because you know where you're going doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Incredible coming of age story

The author does a really good job at showing naivety of being young and in love, while not being too on the nose with it. I like how complicated the characters are. Each character has so many layers. Allowing you to relate to each one of them on different layers. It’s a book that can really grip you. Highly recommend!

Went nowhere

Storyline was predictable
I kept waiting for something to happen and it just … did not.