If I Fall, If I Die Paperback by Michael Christie

Product Details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (2026-10-13)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 336 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780771046810
• Item Weight: 272.16 grams
• Dimensions: 20.22 x 13.31 x 2.16 cm

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Greenwood, If I Fall, If I Die is Michael Christie's remarkable debut novel, full of dazzling prose, unforgettable characters, and a poignant and heartfelt depiction of coming of age.

Will has never been Outside, at least not since he can remember. For most of his young life, he has lived happily and safely inside his small house with his mother, a fiercely loving yet wildly eccentric agoraphobe who panics at the thought of opening the front door. Inside, their world is rich and loving: there are rooms named after cities they've never been to and art supplies stacked in towers. But Will’s thirst for adventure can’t be contained; he's eleven years old and curiosity is its own kind of gravity.

Clad in a protective helmet and unsure of how to talk to other kids, Will finally ventures outside, bracing himself for disaster. But soon he meets Jonah, who introduces him to the thrills of skateboarding and becomes the first real friend of his life, and he begins to understand what he's been missing.

Then a boy disappears. And the Outside that had started to feel like freedom starts to feel like something else entirely.

In kinetic prose, Michael Christie has written a tender, propulsive coming-of-age story told at the collision point between innocence and the world's hard edges. It is a portrait of a mother's love, and her anguish so deep it becomes its own prison, and a boy brave enough to pick the lock. Luminous, surprising, and utterly humane, this is a novel about learning when to protect the ones we love and when to let them fall—and what it means to be alive.

About the Author

MICHAEL CHRISTIE is the author of Greenwood, which was an international bestseller, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, won the Arthur Ellis Award, and has been translated into ten languages. If I Fall, If I Die, his debut novel, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Kirkus Prize, was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick, and was on numerous Best of the Year lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar's Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. A former carpenter and unhoused-shelter worker, he lives in Victoria, British Columbia, the unceded territory of the Lkwungen speaking people, and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEC First Nations.