The Incomparables

Fiction. THE INCOMPARABLES is the debut novel from the Trillium nominated author of Animal. Virginia Templar is obsessed with fabric, the texture and weight of cloth. Through fabrics, curtains, costumes, she expresses herself in a way she feels incapable of doing in words. For the past ten years she's apprenticed in the wardrobe department of a small Shakespearean theatre company and has finally been given the opportunity to showcase her designs. When she discovers her husband is having an affair with his leading lady, she seeks revenge the only way she knows how, she weaves her panic, pain, and paranoia into the costumes. It costs her the job. She swears she'll never sew again, packs her things and returns to her mother and the sprawling country estate she left years ago. When a group of counsellors from the city book the family's bed & breakfast for the summer to prepare for a special wedding ceremony, Virginia's plans to never thread a needle again are challenged. Through the one thing she cannot live without, the counsellors lure Virginia into a role she did not see coming—herself. THE INCOMPARABLES is a novel about four houses, four families, and a large-mouthed pure god woven together by a thick, floral brocade salvaged from a dead woman's couch. It is a story of the roles we cling to and lose, and how the things we live for change or maybe never were what we took them to be.