Set in the hip urban core of Toronto and in the city’s outlying areas, this is the story of an unlikely family – held together by love and longing, pain and regret – and what happens when the ties that bind them begin to unravel. There is Walker, a tender but rough-edged horse dealer trying to do the right thing; his fading lounge-singer girlfriend, Mimi; his sister, Joy, who cleans at the golf club nearby; and Joy’s teenage daughter, Tanis, self-sufficient, nervy, wise, locked in conflict with her mother, and ready to break away from the tangle of this makeshift family – and does, until a tragic event changes everything. Gritty, seductive, infused with wit and an undercover poignancy, this is an audacious and emotionally compelling novel by a writer who knows exactly where the heart lives and why it’s sometimes so hard to find it. “Elise Levine uses language as a dare – tough, intense, almost defensive; ironically, it only heightens the effect of her compassion, which pierces the narrative with equal immediacy. From this edginess her vivid characters – who, in various states of ruin and repair, struggle towards a sense of family – emerge as authentic as bone.”
–Anne Michaels

“An accomplished first novel.… Requests and Dedications is a worthy successor to Levine’s impressive premiere.…Levine uses language deftly.…”
–Eye Weekly


“[A] bold debut novel.… [Levine’s characters] slowly reveal themselves, open up inwardly to the reader in a way that comes to feel important and beautiful.… The writing is dynamic and compelling. Pure power.”
–Globe and Mail

“One tough cookie of a writer.… Her canvas is the Canadian working-class family, her location the rural fringe of the Torontonian megacity, her theme, that pain outlives, while love can only endure.… Levine is clever and talented.…”
–Quill & Quire

“A cutting-edge literary sensation.”
–NOW Magazine

“Reading Elise Levine is akin to a wild ride down a dark road at night.… Bold and startling.… Precipitous and exhilarating.”
–Globe and Mail

“Elise Levine’s writing compresses the distance between art and audience.… She is a visceral imagist.…”
–Ottawa Citizen

“[Requests and Dedications tells] fascinating stories, includes sharply imagined moments and draws readers into the make-believe of fiction with alarming power.”
–Hal Niedzviecki, This Magazine

“Exciting and fresh.…”
–Vue Weekly

“No reader can make his or her way through [her] stories and retain any kind of complacency.”
–Calgary Herald

“One of Canada’s finest fiction writers.… Levine demonstrates a kind of incandescent knowing about human affairs which she deploys in stunningly nuanced passages.… A sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.”
–George Elliott Clarke, Mail Star (about Driving Men Mad)