Included in the Quill & Quire 2025 Spring Preview
"Birrell is not interested in crafting a suspense tale. Instead, she has written a narrative about the difficulties inherent in operating a diverse, multicultural educational institution and what happens when the carefully constructed boundaries between authority figures and students rupture." – Steve Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
"One of the best books you’ll read in 2025, Heather Birrell’s new book has everything. Gorgeous, compelling, fraught with tension, chasing shadows, full of light. Dazzlingly literary and unputdownable at once, this story of a high school English teacher who goes into labour during a lockdown is a polyphonic ode to caregiving, community, and public schools. It’s a fast paced read that will stay with you long after the final pages (which made me cry, it was so beautiful)." – Kerry Clare, author of Asking for a Friend
“In her new collection, Mad Hope, Birrell puts her talents on display once more, exploring characters whose reasonable expectations of the world have been devastated by sudden death (sometimes violent) or other tragedies…Some of her characterizations are so arresting in their exactness they caused me to pause.” – The Globe and Mail on Mad Hope
“[Birrell] seems to have mastered the art of writing about universal themes and subjects – marriage, family, motherhood, death, sex – in a manner both familiar and unsettling. Her prose is dense with detail yet fluid, carrying the reader into the inner workings of her characters’ carefully constructed lives.” – Quill & Quire on Mad Hope
