The CBC Books fall reading list: 40 Canadian books to read this season (Fall 2023)
Globe and Mail Opinion: This fall, I’m rethinking the lessons I learned on campus about consent (September 2023)
CBC Radio, The Next Chapter Genevieve Scott explores sex, consent and the ‘duplicity & dishonesty’ of the late-90s in novel The Damages (September 2023)
Ontarion Book Review: The Damages by Genevieve Scott (Fall 2023, University of Guelph)
Post @Shepherd.com: The best novels that feature complex female relationships (Fall 2003)
The Bookseller: Verve Books scoops novels by trio of ‘exciting new writers’
Toronto Star ‘The Damages’: the thriller with a narrator you won’t be able to get out of your head this summer (August 2023)
The Suburban Books & Reviews: The Damages (August 2023)
Pickle Me This The Damages: Review (August 2023)
Kirkus Reviews A compelling character study that tackles intriguing moral questions (July 2023)
Authority Magazine Genevieve Scott On The Book That Changed Her Life (Summer 2023)
Globe and Mail Thirty-three books to read this summer” (June 2023)
Canadian Living “Pulse pounding reads about finding lost loved ones” (June 2023)
Advance Praise
“The Damages is a probing, courageous work—a dance along the tightropes of memory, justice and love. It explodes the myth of the innocent bystander and ultimately celebrates the lifelong moral challenge of learning who you really are.
—Sarah Henstra, author of The Red Word, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction
“The Damages is an eerily sharp depiction of being self-conscious, self-obsessed, and eighteen in the late nineties, and just how painful it can be to face the past and question why one makes the choices they do when they’re young. Packed with insecurity, embarrassment, jealousy, and shame, each page made me anxious in the best possible way. Heart pounding, I couldn’t stop reading!”
—Cedar Bowers, Scotiabank Giller Prize-longlisted author of Astra
“There is a skillful irony in a character so courageously honest about her lies. Genevieve Scott offers a view inside of a complicated woman from young adulthood to middle age, in refreshing and deceptively clean prose. The Damages takes a critical look at truth and perspective in a (post-) #MeToo era, calling into question the ways our personal truths are shaped by our pasts.”
—Fawn Parker, Scotiabank Giller Prize-longlisted author of What We Both Know
“The Damages led me into a maze with a thread—and then just never let me go. This story builds with thrilling intensity through moral knots and human dilemmas, led by a brilliantly complex protagonist as she navigates her way through betrayal, guilt and culpability.”
—Charlotte Gill, author of Almost Brown
“The Damages is the most honest novel I’ve read in a long time. A propulsive story about the complexities of trust, the cruelties in relationships, and the space between meaning well and doing good. Genevieve Scott is a fresh, brilliant voice in fiction.”
—Leah Mol, author of Sharp Edges
“Genevieve Scott is a sophisticated writer, and The Damages is a sharp, multi-layered story about truth, lies, history and memory. I stayed up late to finish it! I was not disappointed: this is a complex and satisfying novel.”
—Sarah Selecky, author of Radiant Shimmering Light
“In the 1990s, women were going to university and joining the workforce in record numbers. Why, then, do many of us have conflicted feelings when looking back? This is one of the first novels I’ve read that does a brilliant job of unpacking the duplicity and dishonesty of the era. An intelligent and intense read about how power structures are passed on—The Damages held me, riveted, in a tight, icy grip.”
—Claire Cameron, author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal