• Rose Addams

Rose Addams

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978-1-77439-069-6 | 2023 April | 312 Pages

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Rose Addams is hitting her sixties, but these days it feels like they’re starting to hit back ...

Rose’s daughter, Morgan, has ditched her thesis program and moved back home to Vancouver, while her son Jason’s partner has never seen eye to eye with his mother. Her husband Charles has decided to take early retirement from the university to work on his long-gestating book, and his rakish best friend Garnet has a new mistress who is way too young for their social circle. When Rose encounters a young man panhandling outside of her library office though, a chain of events is set in motion whereby Rose will have to confront all the facets of her rapidly-complicating life...

Recalling the work of Caroline Adderson, Krista Foss, and Marie-Renée Lavoie, Margie Taylor’s Rose Addams is an insight into the life of a woman who is in the process of beginning her third act, an empathetic and incisive look at the problems of those just exiting middle age while attempting to keep up with a rapidly-changing world.

“A beautifully crafted work, Rose Addams features vivid characters facing real-world problems in a narrative that reads like a thriller. I had a hard time putting this one down.”
— Ken McGoogan, author of Fatal Passage and Lady Franklin's Revenge

“In a style reminiscent of Carol Shields and Bonnie Burnard, Margie Taylor has crafted a warm-hearted tale from the life of Rose Addams. Rose, as her husband Charles points out, is a woman ‘compelled to insert herself into every situation.’ Not quite a busybody, not quite a fixer (sometimes the opposite), Rose tries her best to be useful and kind and keep up with the times. No easy task when presented with  the abrupt appearance of a young man who stayed at their home briefly when he was a child, a daughter in a personal crisis, new and peculiar behaviour from Rose’s husband, and various surprise announcements from her long-term friends and their mismatched (according to Rose) romantic partners. Rose’s strong character and her knack for jumping to (incorrect) assumptions make for a highly engaging, frequently funny, story that is, ultimately, about the changing nature of all of our relationships as we age.”
— Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands and Western Taxidermy

“Readers will smile to recognize family members, friends, and themselves in this gentle skewering of a middle-class, middle-aged Vancouver woman and her circle.  Hints of Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Strout enliven a perspicacious account of friendships, generation gaps, unsuitable attachments, and the indignities of encroaching age.  Margie Taylor has created, in Rose Addams, an avatar for women of a certain age who struggle to learn a new generation’s perspectives and mores, but when crises arise, are heroically present with their experience and fierce commitment to the vulnerable of society.”
— Karen Hofmann, award-winning author of A Brief View from the Coastal Suite and Echolocation

“Margie Taylor loves Rose Addams. Loves her despite Rose’s blind spots and anxieties. Or because of them. In this compulsively readable novel, Taylor shines a witty and compassionate light on the world of a woman navigating her sixth decade—a daring project, given how little literature has bothered. As Taylor deftly nudges her heroine past personal crises that test her convictions about motherhood, marriage and propriety, she lets Rose (and us readers) glimpse a new, deeper kind of self-knowledge that only comes with age.”
— Marguerite Pigeon, author of The Endless Garment and Some Extremely Boring Drives 

“Margie Taylor writes with great empathy and sharp insight. Readers will root for the characters in this compelling story.”
— Lisa Guenther, author of Friendly Fire

“This book is a close study of what it truly means to be family. It explores connection, changing priorities, hidden truths, and burgeoning self-discovery. There is much change in the works, but at the heart is the true love of one woman’s heart as she seeks out to help those closest in her life.”
— Worn Pages and Ink (full review)

"[f]unny, charming and entertaining."
— Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader (full review)

"[a] quiet masterpiece … It is both loud and quiet, funny and somber, solidly grounded and deeply moving.”
— Michael Sobota, The Chronicle-Journal

"Rose Addams is a Canadian everywoman: readily recognizeable, easy to engage with, sympathetic and empathetic."
— The Walleye Magazine
(full review)

  1. Some readers have said they liked Rose more by the end of the book than they did at the beginning. Did your opinion of her change at all, and if so, why?
  2. What did you like best, and least, about the book?
  3. Were there any moments that particularly resonated with you?
  4. Did the characters seem believable or likeable to you? Did they remind you of anyone?
  5. How realistic are the interactions in the book, e.g., between Rose and her daughter, Rose and Charles, Rose and Marie, Rose and Ryan? Can you relate to these in any way?
  6. If you were making a movie of Rose Addams who would you cast?
  7. What do you think of the book’s cover? How well does it convey what the book is about?
  8. If you could ask the author anything, what would it be?
  9. Are there lingering issues you’d like to read about in a sequel?
  10. At the end of the book, Rose surveys her friends and thinks, “This is it. These are their friends and this is their life. Marie was right; they’re at the stage where everyone is going to die or get divorced. They probably aren’t going to make new friends—their adventures will be limited. Without realizing it, they’ve come to the end of something.” She finds that comforting; what’s your reaction?