"If it’s true that the young inhabit their own world, then novels about urban youth can feel like dispatches from a foreign country even when they’re set in your own neighbourhood. Mikella Nicol’s Aphelia, a cause célèbre on its original 2017 French publication, follows the ups and downs — mostly downs — of a 20-something graveyard-shift worker at a call centre during a summer heat wave as she attempts to recover from the messy end of a volatile relationship. If you’ve found your views on millennials piqued and enriched by Geneviève Pettersen and Guillaume Morissette, Nicol looks like the natural next thing." - Ian McGillis, Montreal Gazette

"This book was a pleasure to read, at times stark and haunting and at others wonderfully descriptive as to almost feel the sweat trickling down your back. The translation by Lesley Trites is on point and flows easily and naturally." - Ann Marie Boulanger, Quebec Reads

"Nicol’s writing is unflinching as she explores the rigours of twenty-first- century early adulthood. This short volume overflows with sex, alcohol, and alienation. The narrator’s sudden obsessions come to rule her entirely, only to lose their power as she moves on to the next fixation. It is a well-crafted portrayal of mid-twenties torment: bursts of intense passion interspersed with periods of depression and ennui on a backdrop of underemployment and horoscope blogs." - Jeff Miller, Montreal Review of Books