To read What Remains of Elsie Jane is to encounter a raw, sometimes angry, and always messy grief. Wakelyn captures a woman falling apart and putting herself back together in the dynamic voice of her complicated protagonist. In her multiverse-curious widowhood, Elsie is unrelentingly hopeful without being cheerful, loving without being good.
Liz Harmer, author of The Amateurs and Strange Loops
What Remains of Elsie Jane reads like a side-splitting obituary. A poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, weird, and heartbreaking window into being bereft and being in love. This book is a striking reminder that there can be beauty in devastation.
Emily Austin, author of Everyone In This Room Will Soon Be Dead
What Remains of Elsie Jane reads like a side-splitting obituary. A poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, weird, and heartbreaking window into being bereft and being in love. This book is a striking reminder that there can be beauty in devastation.
Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
A poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, weird, and heartbreaking window into being bereft and being in love.
Eva Jurczyk, author of The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
What Remains of Elsie Jane reads like A Year of Magical Thinking, if it had been written by Nora Ephron instead of Joan Didion — but by a Nora Ephron who coped with tragedy by clumsily summoning wizards instead of making carbonara. What Remains of Elsie Jane is an exploration of grief that manages to avoid self-seriousness. The behaviour of those around the aggrieved is so sharply observed you’ll think that Evelyn Waugh dipped in to give his notes on the behaviour of Pacific Northwest millennials. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me blush, sometimes it made me do all three on the same page.
Eva Jurczyk, author of The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
In this remarkably intimate portrait of grief, Chelsea Wakelyn deftly weaves comedy and tragedy in the wake of a marriage destroyed by drug poisoning. With a sure touch, Wakelyn dismantles the stereotypes of those affected by this too common issue. The narrator’s unique voice is at once relatable and unhinged, the powerful pulls of rage and love on full and magnificent display, bringing to life a fully realized humanity as only honestly drawn fiction can do.
Lilian Nattel, bestselling author of The River Midnight and Girl At The Edge of Sky
The novel handles the complexities of grief through sarcasm and Elsie’s personal thoughts as she attempts to regain control of her life…It’s her obsession with her fantasy that helps Elsie to stay afloat.
Foreword Reviews
I’ve never read a book which so completely captures the way time bends when you’re in the middle of a completely traumatic event, like a sudden death. What Remains of Elsie Jane is tender and funny and sad, but it’s also deeply realistic, even as Elsie seems to go off the rails.
The Miramichi Reader
It’s a beautifully written, complicated, intimate story that’s as weird as it is honest — just as grief often is. I highly recommend!
The Southern Bookseller
Elsie is depicted so clearly in her absurd state of loss, a powerful feat which resonates…I needed this book, and maybe you do, too.
Vancouver Writers Fest
This novel about death just pulses with life, with a force as compelling as the one that kept me turning the pages. I absolutely adored it.
Kerry Clare, author of Asking for a Friend
This is Wakelyn’s first book, and she demonstrates an astounding talent for combining comedy with tragedy. In this aspect, Wakelyn shares many of Miriam Toews’ extraordinary gifts.
The British Columbia Review
This sense of the novel as TV is exacerbated by Elsie’s fast-paced, acutely self-aware speech, rather reminiscent of Gilmore Girls.
Literary Review of Canada