Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020
“Intriguingly crafted and surprisingly funny, Schofield continues to produce work that challenges conventions and enthralls readers.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Bina treats problems of social care slantwise, with a caustic charm liable to leave you blindsided by its most painful turns . . . Powerful, funny and highly manipulative . . . [with] admirable, wholly non-emollient chutzpah.” —Anthony Cummins, The Guardian
“This style is entirely unique: Schofield’s wit makes it slip down easily, yet her refusal to spell things out gives the reader plenty of work to determine what is going on. By not telling us explicitly what happened, we are embedded more deeply in Bina’s character. The reader has a greater investment in her story and her life, and the book makes a dialogue out of a monologue. . . . [Bina’s] warnings pepper the reader like buckshot, sober slaps in the face amid the tragicomic malarkey. . . . Here’s another warning: watch out for this book . . . It will undo you.” —John Self, Irish Times
“Imagine, if you can, Samuel Beckett reborn as a 21st century woman and you will have an approximation of the literary pleasures on offer in a Schofield novel. Hers is a distinctive, deadpan prose, echoing with menace and laced with black humour. The novel is a bit like a tough minded feminist Waiting for Godot rendered in suggestive, post modern fragments that imply narratives of violence against women, assisted suicide, death, friendship and madness.” —Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun
“In Bina, Schofield gives her readers a great deal . . . [the voice is] entertaining—but Bina is so much more. . . . It is a book that honours female friendship and its extraordinary gifts. . . . Bina’s narrative is not linear; it is an economical sort of roundabout puzzle. You can finish it in a day, but you had better pay attention, and it will stay with you for a good deal longer.” —The Globe and Mail
“Candid, abrasive, selectively compassionate, and intermittently forgetful, the homespun philosopher first glimpsed in Malarky . . . is a weathered cabinet chock full of revelations, opinions, maxims, and hard-earned wisdom for us, her presumed readers. . . . With her superbly realized and delightfully contradictory ‘practical woman’ at the centre of an artful tale, Vancouver’s Schofield never fails to captivate, entertain, and provoke. Maith thú!” —Toronto Star
“Schofield locates herself in the vanguard of a group of strong women writers—Rachel Cusk, Eimear McBride, Valeria Luiselli, Anna Burns—who are radically revising the novel’s potential and pushing it forward as a form. She calls this book ‘a novel in warnings,’ as if putting the reader on notice as to its singularity and calibrated strangeness. Her work is challenging and perturbing, sure. It is also, pace Marie Kondo, a source of much joy.” —Steven W. Beattie, Quill & Quire
“Bina is fiction of the rarest and darkest kind, a work whose pleasures must be taken measure for measure with its pains. Few writers operate the scales of justice with more precision … The novel’s themes–male violence, the nature of moral courage, the contemporary problems of truth and individuality, the status of the female voice–could hardly be more timely or germane. Schofield’s sense of injustice is unblinking and without illusion, yet her writing is so vivacious, so full of interest and lust for life: she is the most compassionate of storytellers, wearing the guise of the blackest comedian.” —Rachel Cusk
“Insightful. Inventive. Hilarious. Genius.” —Eimear McBride
“Intimate, disarming, and riotous, Bina is a searing exploration of one woman’s soul that unwinds like a reluctant confession. Whether Bina is rescuing a ne’er-do-well from a ditch, taking a hammer to a plane or considering the dark request of her best friend, Schofield has created a compelling, practical everywoman—a woman who has had enough and is ready make a spectacle.” —Eden Robinson
