Yorick Yip Meets the Local God

From the acclaimed author of the Giller-shortlisted novel The Double Life of Benson Yu comes a wildly inventive literary novel about a single dad, his precocious daughter, a forgotten writer, and the extraordinary, unpredictable ways they are connected.

Ever since Yorick Yip’s music career fizzled out with a whimper, he’s been at loose ends. Trapped in Vancouver without a work visa after the pandemic closes the border with the US, Yorick finds himself with full custody of his daughter, Lucy, who is the result of a fling with an aspiring Canadian comedian. Estranged from Lucy’s mother and faced with the prospect of selling his beloved guitar to make ends meet, Yorick can’t see what his next step is beyond getting groceries at the food bank and shoplifting to get Lucy shoes that fit. The thing he’s trying not to see—that he’s probably a deadbeat dad—is staring him in the face.

Lucy herself, an only child and a smart, lovably precocious, stone-cold little weirdo preoccupied with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is showing signs of distress. Her mother, Lida, has had a mental breakdown and has moved up north to join an environmental protest; her father never makes enough money to keep them in the same apartment for long. And then the voice starts talking to her.

Meanwhile, in a rent-controlled apartment across the city, infamous writer Elle Clarkson is working on the follow-up to the breakout, cult-favourite debut novel, A Heaviness That’s Gone, that made her a literary sensation…several decades ago. Her sophomore effort was hotly anticipated, then laughably delayed, and as she fends off the efforts of a keen, young, would-be biographer, Fumi, she’s forced to reckon with the darkness and instability in her own past.

But what these people don’t know is that they are connected in astonishing ways. What follows is an intricately constructed novel of extraordinary skill—an Ouroboros of a story with an eye-popping twist. By turns dryly funny, wrenching, and tender, and featuring an unforgettable cast of eccentric characters, Yorick Yip Meets the Local God is a haunting exploration of artistic integrity, financial precarity, the depth of filial bonds, and the mythology of the afterlife from one of Canada’s most innovative novelists.