"In this exquisitely written memoir, Baillie delves into the fine despair coating family relationships, calling into question how clearly we see those we live most closely to. Through the art of the essay, she explores her mother's passing, her father's protective role, and the long-term consequences of living with a sister who has schizophrenia. Here are the age-old challenges of loving someone who doesn't understand us, the doomed attempts to save someone from themselves, and the constant reckoning with the millions of ways family imprints itself on us. An elegy to the beautiful fight to keep a family together and an ode to the devastating loss when things fall apart, There Is No Blue rattles the bones of what it is to be in imperfect relationships with the people we are tied to by birth and blood." - 2024 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury (Annahid Dashtgard, Taylor Lambert, and Christina Sharpe) " There is No Blue is a study in the tyranny of fragility. It's strangely mesmerizing, also disturbing. It's a book about memory--whose memory counts--but it's also a book about art." -Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times "[Baillie] knows she'll never find out why a shared childhood should have had such different outcomes; the only truth she arrives at will be variable and of her own making.
Still, the 'disobedient tale' she tells is tough, tender and compelling." - Blake Morrison, The Guardian "Baillie's memoir in essays, There Is No Blue , emerges from a desire to collapse [the] distance between sister and sister." - Rachel Gerry, Literary Review of Canada Praise for the Author: "Revealing, puzzling, dazzling, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel resists reduction, rewards rereading. It draws you forward as a narrative should, but ultimately unfolds in you like poetry." - Jamie Zeppa, Literary Review of Canada on The Search for Heinrich Schlögel "Baillie delivers a work of magical realism that captures the experience of postcolonial guilt . and gives voice to a silenced past." - Publishers Weekly , starred review of The Search for Heinrich Schlögel "A poetic journey into mystery that asks hazy questions about time, culture and one's sense of self." - Kirkus Reviews on The Search for Heinrich Schlögel "The beautiful descriptions of the wild outdoors in northern Canada alone make this book worth reading.
Baillie is an excellent storyteller, combining adventure with deeper elements and the characters' search for self. Highly recommended." - Library Journal on The Search for Heinrich Schlögel "Clara, despite her volatility, is the novel's linchpin - a creative choice that speaks to Baillie's characteristic cerebral playfulness as well as her allegiance to characters held on society's margins . Baillie's empathetic portrayal of Clara shows a mind following its own kind of logic. There's a lighter tone to this novel, so it might surprise readers how much it has to say about creativity and the fractured self." - The Globe and Mail on If Clara " If Clara finds Baillie at the top of her game with this complex, deftly layered new novel . a richly rewarding read to sink into for a solitary afternoon." - The Toronto Star on If Clara.