How to Get Along With Women

Longlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize

A sharply original debut collection, How To Get Along With Women showcases Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s keen eye and inventive voice. Infused with a close and present danger, these stories tighten the knot around power, identity, and sexuality, and draw the reader into the pivotal moments where—for better or for worse—we see ourselves for what we truly are.

Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s fiction has been published in The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, This Magazine, and The Puritan, and is taught as part of the short story curriculum at the University of Waterloo. A former host of the popular Pivot at the Press Club reading series, Elisabeth currently lives in St. John’s. How To Get Along With Women is her first book.

“How to Get Along With Women is a finely written collection exploring the ways our identities, our most intimate relationships and our experiences can be shaped by the world we inhabit, a world mapped by dynamics of power.” – rabble.ca

“How to Get Along with Women is a strong collection, in part because the voices written into each story vary so widely.” – National Post

“De Mariaffi is a writer adept at painting pictures from words and she approaches her characters with a firm sense of humour, understanding that all of us are slightly wacky and difficult.” – Toronto Star

“Elisabeth de Mariaffi is urgently trapping the ten percent of emotions that hardly get mentioned by anyone else. She’s alive to what disturbs, and she’s dead to cliché.”  – Michael Winter, author of The Death of Donna Whalen

“Centring on women fighting to come to terms with their own identity or trying to grasp the full force of their sexuality, de Mariaffi explores her subjects with a detail-oriented eye, deftly inserting the reader into key moments in her characters’ lives.” – Quill & Quire

“How to Get Along With Women is at once stunning and daring, a kaleidoscope of stories weaving the emotions and experiences of mostly female protagonists as they explore their relationships with themselves, their environments and others.” – Canada Arts Connect

“De Mariaffi’s writing is biting and captivating.” — The Book Stylist