ISBN: 978-1443462648

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Hazzley is at loose ends, even three years after the death of her husband. When her longtime friend Cassandra, café owner, suggests that she start up a conversation group. Four people turn up for the first meeting: Gwen, recently widowed, finds herself pet-sitting a cantankerous parrot; Chiyo, a forty-year-old fitness instructor, has cared for her unyielding but gossip-loving mother through the final days of her life; Addie, pre-emptively grieving a close friend who is seriously ill; and Tom, an antique dealer and amateur poet who, deprived of home baking since becoming a widower, comes to the first meeting hoping cake will be served. They are soon joined by Allam, a Syrian refugee with his own story to tell.

These six strangers are learning that new beginnings are always possible. This moving, funny and deeply empathic new novel reminds us that life, with all its twists and turns, never loses its capacity to surprise.

Zoomer Book Club

“It’s not a far-flung locale that throws this disparate group together, just a shared need for the comfort of strangers in the humble back room of a local café. Hazzley, disconsolate and still grappling with widowhood, starts a weekly grief discussion group. Its members don’t initially share the whole story of their loss, but each has a capacity for reinvention. As she did in her acclaimed novel Tell, poet and essayist Itani is wise about capturing the ordinary drama of different lives. It’s large in scope yet an intimate illustration of E.M. Forster’s edict: only connect.”

Linda Spalding, Governor General’s Award-winning author of The Purchase

“Itani's company is Always Worth Keeping but this new set of characters is grieving in surprising and diverse and sometimes embarrassing ways, and doing it so wholeheartedly and experimentally, that I jumped into the group of them for good and keeps. This is a book that brings comfort and joy.”

QUILL & QUire

“If nothing else, Frances Itani’s latest novel shows the utter importance of community. Such a message is ironically timely, given the current need for physical distancing during a global pandemic. But Itani’s book is much more than this. The novel is so beautifully written and so full of wisdom that it’s likely readers will want to return to it numerous times.”

Wayne Grady, author of Up From Freedom

“The Company We Keep is a multifaceted meditation on the living world of grief, starting with the irony of its title. With her characteristic compassion and gentle humour, Frances Itani brings us to Hazzley’s Grief Discussion Group, where we learn that grief assumes many guises – and isn’t always for the departed. In the end, we also grieve for those left behind.”

Dr. Jillian Horton, author of We Are All Perfectly Fine

“This charming, uplifting portrait of strangers brought together by loss is a testament to the common roots of our suffering. Itani’s writing is familiar in all the best ways – cozy and comforting, like a letter from an old friend.  Like grief itself, it leads us to unexpected and tender places.”

Linden MacIntyre, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of The Bishop’s Man

“Frances Itani leads us away from a raucous world of politics and plagues in this insightful examination of lives left ragged by the surprising complexity of grief.

Observer (London)

“Frances Itani doles out lucidity, empathy and poetry in crackling equal measures.”

NEWSDAY

“Frances Itani is an artist who understands what to include and what to leave out, when to whisper and when to shout … [her] writing is merely breathtaking.”

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HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2003

ISBN: 9781554684786

Elegantly written and profoundly moving, Frances Itani’s debut novel is a tale of virtuosity and power. Set on the eve of the Great War, Deafening spans two continents and the lives of a young deaf woman and her beloved husband.

"Some books just demand the adjective 'wonderful.' This is one of them." — The Times (London)

TELL

HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2014

ISBN: 9780802123368

In 1919, only months after the end of the Great War, Kenan, a young soldier who has returned from the war damaged and disfigured, confines himself to his small house on the Bay of Quinte. His wife, Tress, attempting to adjust to the trauma that overwhelms her husband and which has changed their marriage, seeks advice from her Aunt Maggie. Maggie, who has her own sorrows, finds joy in her friendship with a local widow and in the Choral Society started by Lukas, a Music Director who has moved to the town from an unknown place in war-torn Europe. As the decade draws to a close and the lives of these characters become more entwined, each of them must decide what to share and what to hide.

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Buy From Publisher

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HarperCollinS CaNADA, 2017

ISBN: 9781443447805

At the end of Tell, a baby is adopted by a young Deseronto couple. Eighteen years on, the baby, Hanora, now a young woman, is told about her adoption. As a second world war looms, Hanora is determined to uncover the mysteries of her identity.

“Ottawa-based author Frances Itani once again captures the imaginations and hearts of readers with That’s My Baby, a poignant story of love and sacrifice . . . . This is yet another unforgettable novel from a Canadian literary icon." — Winnipeg Free Press