Shortly after Mary Novik's Conceit was published by Doubleday Canada in Fall 2007, it was hailed by The Globe and Mail as "a magnificent novel of 17th-century London."  It was long-listed for the Giller prize and short-listed for the Ethel Wilson award (BC Book Prizes). It was chosen as a Book of the Year by both Quill & Quire and The Globe and Mail. Conceit will be published in paperback in July 2008.

In this section, you can read an excerpt from Conceit, as well as a synopsis, a bookclub guide, a Q & A, and highlights from reviews as they appear. On my News page, you'll find links to the full text of reviews and other articles, including Nancy Lee's interview of me for Booming Ground. You'll also find links to sound files, such as the conversation with my editor, Lara Hinchberger, and my recordings at Authors Aloud, and also links to blogs, such as the lively reviews at The Overdecorated Bookcase and BookPuddle.

To start things off, here's Jim Bartley's reason for picking Conceit as one of the top five debut novels for The Globe 100 for 2007:

"Conceit is a plenteous, fully engaging re-creation of 17th-century England, observed through the eyes of poet John Donne's daughter, Pegge. Mary Novik's imagination leaps from ecstatic to hellish, probing the carnal, the mortal and the mystical in fascinating counterpoint. The story opens with the great London fire of 1666, expands through decades, then revisits the charred ruins for an apotheosis of the macabre."
"My Top Five: A Feast of Firsts," The Globe 100, Globe and Mail

Synopsis of Mary Novik's Conceit
from the publisher, Doubleday Canada

Set against the lively backdrop of seventeenth-century England, from the intrigue-ridden court to the teeming, bawdy streets of London and elegant country-house gardens, this audacious debut novel vividly portrays the lives of men and women driven by passion.

Pegge Donne is still a rebellious girl, barely in her teens and already too clever for a world that values learning only in men, when her father, the famous poet John Donne, begins arranging marriages for his five daughters—including Pegge.

Pegge, however, is desperate to experience the all-consuming desire that led to her parents' clandestine marriage, notorious throughout England for shattering social convention—and for inspiring some of the most erotic and profound poetry ever written. She sets out to win the love of Donne's friend, Izaak Walton—a man infatuated with her older sister—and tries, in ways that push the limits of daughterly behaviour, to draw the secrets of desire out of her father during his final days. Even after her father dies, Pegge struggles to free herself from an obsession that threatens to drive her beyond the bounds of reason.

	Portrait of John Donne

Intertwined with Pegge's singular voice are those of John Donne and Ann More, each telling their own version of a love story that swept all before it. A timeless novel, Conceit is seductive, elegant, and richly satisfying