Susan Sanford Blades
My debut novel, Fake It So Real, won the 2021 ReLit Award in the novel category and was a finalist for the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Fake It So Real takes on the fallout from a punk-rock lifestyle—the future of “no future”—and its effect on the subsequent generations of one family.
“Tender and lacerating. A jolt and a thump. Reading this book is a downright bodily experience.”
—Zoey Leigh Peterson, author of Next Year, For Sure
“This is it. Nobody rocks a sentence like Susan Sanford Blades. Precise and furious at the same time, her writing thrums with the pure energies of sex and music, deep longing and deeper love.”
—Alexander MacLeod, author of Animal Person
“The stories feel inhabited, the people recognizably flawed and struggling. [Sanford Blades] is refreshingly frank and unsentimental in her execution. Her language is full of verve and humour.”
—Steven Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
What People Are Saying About Fake It So Real
“Oh wow. This book reached into my throat just to tear out my heart and play hacky sack with it. Bravo!”
— Paige, Goodreads
“Susan Sanford Blades is a discovery. … She spanks out line after quotable line as if she speaks in aphorisms. … Sentences carved out of the ether but anchored in an incredibly convincing, grubby, and hilariously inept reality.”
“I fell in love with each of these broken and breaking women, so skillfully, artfully, deliciously rendered—so real. Fake It So Real is a must-must-must read. You’ll want to recommend it to everyone. You’ll wear it like an aura for days afterwards”
— Kyeren Regehr, author of Cult Life
“My favourite love stories are impossible love stories and Fake It So Real is rich with all varieties of them. … It’s some rich, intergenerational exploration and it is so, so good.”
— @carlyisreading, Instagram
“The language in Fake It So Real is precise, at times lush almost to the point of grotesque … Sanford Blades creates vivid characters and scenes with just the right words. … Fake It So Real is a great introduction to Sanford Blades, a writer to watch.”
— Megan Butcher, Herizons
“[A] book whose effort never shows, whose seams and joints are invisible. It just works, and as a reader, it’s such a pleasure to submit to a book that’s so well constructed. … a story of love and family that is achingly real.”
— Kerry Clare, Pickle me This
“Fake It So Real is an astonishing debut novel. … Susan Sanford Blades infuses her language with powerful energy.”
— Jay Ruzesky, The Malahat Review
“The characters feel complicated and real, and most palpably, their pain feels brutally authentic. … what struck me most about this book is the sentence work. Sanford Blades plays with form here, slicing out the unnecessary connective tissue in lines and paragraphs, so that the writing feels carved out, chiseled, hard-edged.”
— Katie Zdybel, Art & Craft
“Sanford Blades’ debut is a gritty, breathtaking portrait of parenthood and the ghosts in every family.”
— Courtney Eathorne, ALA Booklist
“[Sanford] Blades’s language … is unadorned and efficient, with a bite that is particularly piquant in the dialogue. … The pared-down style, irony, and shifting perspective combine to accentuate the jagged edges of relationships between and among the characters.”
— Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag