Praise for We Are All of Us Left Behind
“This captivating coming-of-age story offers a masterclass of rhythm and pacing. It took every ounce of my discipline to not glance ahead a few pages to see where this novel would take me next. Bradley Somer has a gift of making everything he writes about feel so palpable. His descriptions of the heat, the cold, the loneliness, the human connections, the yearning for connection, the awkwardness of things said and left unsaid make this book a wonderful read.” ALI HASSAN, actor, comedian, host of CBC’s Canada Reads
“The adolescent narrator of Bradley Somer’s We Are All of Us Left Behind lives a desperate, hardscrabble life on society’s margins. Without family or friends, he embarks on a search for a grandfather he has never met, which takes him from a dusty prairie town to Belgrade via Amsterdam and Rome, a journey filled with curious encounters and interesting characters. In spare, lean, poetic prose, Bradley Somer relates a compelling, deeply thoughtful story about a young man’s urgent need to live E.M. Forster’s famous dictum, “Only connect!” It is a novel of the moment, a reminder that compassion is a necessity. It will stick in my mind for a long time.”GUY VANDERHAEGHE, three-time Governor General’s Award winnng author of The Englishman’s Boy, The Last Crossing and A Good Man
“We Are All of Us Left Behind is a keenly observed and deeply compassionate novel about resilience and the innate human desire for connection. Somer takes us on a raw, heartfelt, and epic trek, from the unforgiving Canadian prairies to the simmering streets of Rome to the idyllic Serbian countryside, as we follow a young man’s struggle to rise above his circumstances and find his place in the world. A brave, honest, and uncompromising book.” THEODORA ARMSTRONG, author of Welcome to Sunny Town
“We Are All of Us Left Behind hooked me on its first line with its first lie. In sparse and propulsive prose, Bradley Somer perfectly captures the lonely desire for love and security in a mean, chaotic world made bearable through hard won moments of aching beauty and human connection. A survival story for our times.” ANGIE ABDOU, bestselling author of In Case I Go and The Bone Cage
“The quiet beauty of Somer’s writing shifts a story of longing and despair into a vital meditation on hope and human connection. We Are All of Us Left Behind is a propulsive work of staggering ingenuity by an unsung hero of modern Canadian literature.”ALI BRYAN, author of Coq and The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships
“Somer’s latest novel is a frenzied and ravaging descent into the underworld, an autopsied travelogue of canyons and neon lights and lacerated bodies, the deep wounds and flayed silhouettes of wayward experience. It’s like being startled into some transgressive cathedral by Chuck Palahniuk, and, finding oneself staring at a ceiling fresco in the style of vagabonds and miscreants (think Jean Genet), of being overcome with the notion that one is falling upwards, toward revelation.” NICHOLAS HERRING, author of Some Hellish, winner of the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
“We Are All of Us Left Behind is a gritty, intimate portrait of a young man’s hard life made softer by the kindness of strangers. I was deeply moved by the delicate intensity of Somer’s prose — and by the hope, ultimately, that he finds in humanity.” EMILY SASO, author of Nine Dash Line and The Weather Inside
“Risky, rough and tender, this gripping novel bridges friends and lies, people and hope, the essential truth in leaving past lives behind.” LEE KVERN, author of Catch You on the Flip Side
