What if some of the artists we feel as if we know―Meryl Streep, Neil Young, Bill Murray―turned up in the course of our daily lives?
This is what happens to Rose McEwan, an ordinary woman who keeps having strange encounters with famous people. In this engrossing, original novel-in-stories, we follow her life from age 17, when she takes a summer writing course led by a young John Updike, through her first heartbreak (witnessed by Joni Mitchell) on the island of Crete, through her marriage, divorce, and a canoe trip with Taylor Swift, Leonard Cohen and Karl Ove Knausgaard. (Yes, read on.)
With wit and insight, Marni Jackson takes a world obsessed with celebrity and turns it on its head. In Don't I Know You?, she shows us how fame is just another form of fiction, and how, in the end, the daily dramas of an ordinary woman’s life can be as captivating and poignant as any luminary tell-all.

 

Marni Jackson has won numerous National Magazine Awards for her journalism, humor, and social commentary. Her non-fiction books have challenged popular thinking on subjects as diverse as the culture of motherhood and the treatment of pain. She has published in Rolling Stone, London Sunday Times, and every major Canadian magazine. Don’t I Know You? is her first work of fiction.

 

“Delightful and audacious…Exquisitely written…Poignant and beautifully rendered.”
―Judith Timson, The Toronto Star
“Stopped me in my tracks…Sensitively rendered stories that encompass one woman’s life…Jackson’s writing is so smooth that it all feels real; anything seems possible…The result is magic.”
―The Globe and Mail
"With its backdrop of cultural touchstones that define the passing generations, this playful journey will especially appeal to fiction lovers who are also pop culture fans.”
―Booklist
“A writer's life is studded with celebrity appearances in this whimsical collection of linked stories…Jackson, a Canadian magazine journalist making her fiction debut, finds many ingenious ways to play this game.”
―Kirkus Reviews