Advance praise for Why We Are Here out now through Vintage. You can find it at your local indie bookstore, or online here
Brilliant and tender, Why We Are Here is a riveting study in grief, waywardness, and renewal. By turns raw, funny, intellectual, and searching, here is a book that mines the depths of human suffering and lights the way forward with the gems it finds. This is the big-hearted, soul-searching novel I’ve been waiting for.
Rachel Yoder, author of Night Bitch
A glorious ride – moving, hilarious, wild, fluid, deadpan. A study in loss and letting go that loops effortlessly between grief, uncertainty and a simple joy.
Luke Davies, author of Candy, Lion and Beautiful Boy
This is a novel after my own heart: a timely testament to the solace of art, nature, and the singular bond between a woman and her dog. With graceful precision and profound insight, Why We Are Here reckons with what it means to grieve in a world that continues to be in crisis and offers a deeply moving reminder of the value of love, even when loving inevitably means risking loss.
Madelaine Lucas, author of Thirst for Salt
In this timeless novel that is somehow also a novel of our times, Briohny Doyle has packed in all you could want in a book, humour and brilliance, joy and yearning, pain and glory, sex and rage.
Ronnie Scott, author of Shirley
Written from piercing depths, Why We Are Here finds a shimmering space between love and death, stasis and escape, kinship and seclusion. The astonishing novel sets new bearings for Australian fiction in the 2020s. Doyle is on fire'
Rebecca Giggs, author of Fathoms
When life knocks you down, have faith in Dog.
After her partner and father die in quick succession, BB moves to a glamorous, condemned beachside apartment at the edge of a glittering city so memory-saturated it might be a mirage. Her plan? To rediscover the person she was before finding, and losing, the love of her life. To heal she’ll party like it’s 1999, walk her motley dog, Baby, and surrender to the simple joys of life alone by the sea.
When a neighbour mistakes her for a dog trainer, and enlists her in correcting the murderous tendencies of his Doberman, BB feels close to a meaningful new life. Harnessing the tenets of Cesar Millan the dog whisperer, and other less canine-centric canons, she helps local dogs and their wealthy, oblivious owners to distinguish between the things they can and cannot change. She even takes tentative steps towards new intimacies—with safely unavailable Franz, and sultry, free-spirited Vera.
But life in Balboa Bay is increasingly surreal. Baby is sending telepathic messages. A nearby prison quotes philosophers over the intercom. The other dog trainers think BB is scab labour. And somewhere on her street there's a dog that sounds like the wind.
Cinematic, heart-breaking, often hilarious, Why We Are Here is a singular love story for strange days. Doyle's witty prose revels in the solace of the natural world, in conversing with writers who have lost and endured, and above all in the profound connection between a woman and her dog.
‘A feat of grief, longing, trust and connection Why We Are Here is a masterpiece of raw courage– shot through with the humour, heart, and more than human understanding that is central to Doyle’s work’
Laura Jean McKay, author of The Animals in That Country