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Vital Signs
  • Published: 2 January 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099538295
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99

Vital Signs

Formats & editions
EBook
5 Jan 2012
Paperback
2 Jan 2013
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A moving and fiercely honest novel that explores marriage through the lens of a crisis of mortality.

‘I think I have found the way to talk to her in the present. The past takes too much language.’

So much is taken for granted in a long marriage, so much is relied upon, resented, and never spoken of. When Anna begins to mangle her sentences as a result of a brain aneurysm that could kill her at any moment, her husband Mike uses his talent as a graphic artist to draw his way closer to his wife. Trying to communicate with her, and himself too, through signs and symbols, he wants to show his wife that she has been his entire universe. But Mike is deeply flawed, hovering on the knife-edge of a confession, he selfishly looks to the woman he loves for absolution. Not knowing how much time they have left together and incoherent with guilt, will he finally confess all the ways in which he rebelled against her power over him, the way he betrayed her?
  • Published: 2 January 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099538295
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99
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About the author

Tessa McWatt

TESSA McWATT is the author of seven novels and two books for young people. Her fiction and non-fiction have been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the City of Toronto Book Awards, and the OCM Bocas Prize. She is the co-editor, along with Dionne Brand and Rabindranath Maharaj, of Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada. Her first picture book for children, Where Are You Agnes?, is based on the life of abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin. She is one of the winners of the Eccles British Library Award 2018, for her memoir: Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, which also won the Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction 2020 and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. She is also a librettist and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her new book, The Snag: A Mother, A Forest and Wild Grief, is a lament for the planet and a plea for change. It was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize 2025 and won the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for Non-Fiction 2026. Born in Guyana, and raised in Canada, she lives in London.
portrait photo of Tessa McWatt

Also by Tessa McWatt

The Snag
Shame on Me
See all

Praise for Vital Signs

Part love story, part forensic examination of the psyche, Tessa McWatt digs deep into what makes us human in this disturbing portrait of family life.

Camilla Gibb

Packed with fascinating insight ... It's a gripping read

Cynthia MacDonald, Globe & Mail

A mesmerizing read. . . . [A] beautiful book. . . . A story of such enigma and economy . . . She depicts the undulating landscape of an enduring marriage with poignancy and power . . . Vital Signs is a work of literature, criticism and philosophy all at once: A formidable intellectual hat trick. At the same time McWatt tells a sincere and simple tale, that like children, we wish would never end.

Donna Bailey Nurse, National Post

Depicts the power struggles and compromises of a long marriage with bracing honesty.

Financial Times

A gripping story focusing on a complex marriage as it reaches crisis point.

Easy Living

A wonderful, thoughtful tale about love, language and living.

Bella