Motherclown

About this item

Indigo’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026 • CBC Books Spring Fiction List 2026 A dual coming-of-age story about performance—both public and private—sexuality, envy, and grief. Motherclown explores the most fundamental and potentially explosive of human relationships: that of a mother and her daughter. In the wake of her father’s death, twenty-one-year-old Elise leaves her boyfriend, mother, and hometown of Niagara Falls to move to Paris. She’s earned a place at Chevalier, an elite physical theatre school with a focus on clown. Not “clown-clown,” but the pursuit of an inner child. At Chevalier, they don’t follow scripts—they follow their souls. The school is merciless, and it is the best. Left behind, Elise’s mother, Catherine, is unravelling. At first she feels irritated, as if she’s just been demoted: from wife to widow, mother to empty-nester. She longs for the