THIS IS IT
A Novel in Stories
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“Matthew Fox’s This Is It—about the stories and secrets that bind families and lovers—is nothing less than a modern masterpiece. Gut-wrenching, sharply observed, and deeply funny, the novel excavates generations of Zappacosta family lore to take the reader on an emotional journey unlike any other. Each sentence is a gift, wrapped in Matthew’s gorgeously dry wit. A tour de force that will leave you breathless!”
— Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of
Meet Me at the Lake and This Summer Will Be Different
Giovanni Zappacosta-O’Hara suspects that there’s more to his family’s legacy than he’s been told. His parents recount the history in devastating, scandalous, and rollicking stories, while Gio and his boyfriend joke that there must be lies woven into the details. When his boyfriend is struck with cancer, the laughter stops. Gio can’t bear watching the disease eat away his life, his sanity, and the person he loves. Full of shame, he flees to New York, using his family history as a feeble excuse—he’s going to get to the bottom of it. What happens next forces Gio to confront his cowardice and find a different motivation for his book: redemption. As he retells the stories, he discovers family secrets that make him question his identity. The hilarious and heartfelt characters he finds along the way give him surprising chances to get over himself—but will he take them?
New York Times bestselling author of The Push and The Whispers
"Bold and punchy, affecting and tender, and funny as hell, This Is It reimagines the family saga, in a series of stories that pass like a baton as Gio and his boyfriend confront the tragedy in their own evolving love story. I smiled every time I sat down with this novel, through both the poignancy and the joyfulness—there’s so much to love about this insightful and heartfelt ode to the many ties that bind. Matthew Fox is a gifted storyteller."
Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Privileges, Sugar Street and Palladio
"A novel-in-stories, and also a novel about stories: how, when they run up against the limits of what’s verifiably true, love and empathy can still carry them across the finish line. Matthew Fox has written a family saga that’s as formally inventive as it is funny and tender."
Author of About Canada: Queer Rights and host of Here & Queer
"This Is It is a consistently surprising unraveling of one family’s history that immerses us in a propulsive journey spanning decades. Author Matthew Fox will leave you both profoundly moved and deeply entertained, wishing you could spend a little more time in the saga he’s so tenderly offered us. A delicious, queer wonder of a book."
Author of I Felt the End Before It Came and Mouthquake
"I've never read anything like This Is It. No secret can ultimately withstand the brilliant and unusual way this family epic unfolds, especially not when an unruly queer is looking into the genealogy. The cast inhabit a kingdom where laughing at tragedy is sometimes the only way through. Bold and unforgiving, but never without empathy—This Is It will take you to totally unexpected places."
Author of Leading Men and The Saint of Lost Things
"Like our inscrutable families, like our most bedeviling love affairs, This Is It is a puzzle that reveals itself in bursts of insight, tender and startling revelations and self-implications, and in the everyday intimacies that form our messy, complicated lives. A wise, honest, and beautifully constructed novel."
Author of The Geography of Pluto and The Family Way
"Brimming with heart and humour, Matthew Fox's This Is It is an epic family drama that spans (and skewers) the generations. It's bold, clever, queer, and sexy. The novel-in-stories moves at a clip and stings with its emotional honesty. A musical masterwork that examines the boundaries of love and bravery."
Author of Lump and Congratulations on Everything
"This Is It moves through multiple cities, decades, and historical moments to excavate both gut-punching emotional trauma and domestic farce, as its many characters use dialogue to wound one another and to shield themselves from hurt. Fox has the rare ability to be heartbreaking and hilarious in a single line."
Author of Wonder World
"Keenly observed and punctuated with a wry wit, Matthew Fox’s This Is It offers a moving meditation on queer love and loss. These interweaving, intergenerational stories are a stunning act of literary unearthing, examining the families we’re born into and the ones we choose through an unvarnished, but not unkind, lens. Fox has crafted a gripping read filled with fierce tenderness and aching poignancy. 'Does it hurt?' 'Just enough.'"
EVENTS
Toronto
Launch party for This Is It: reading and Q&A hosted by Peter Knegt
December 16, 2024 @ 7:30 p.m.
Glad Day Bookshop, 499 Church St, Toronto
Guelph
Reading and signing for This Is It: meet and greet
December 17, 2024 @ 7:00 p.m.
The Bookshelf, 41 Quebec St., Guelph
Montreal
Launch party for This Is It: reading & Q&A hosted by Christopher DiRaddo
December 19, 2024 @ 7:30 p.m.
Notre Dame des Quilles, 32 rue Beaubien E., Montreal
MATTHEW FOX
Author of This Is It, a new novel released on October 15, 2024, and the short story collection Cities of Weather.
I write.
I edit.
I read.
I review books.
I come from Canada.
I live in Berlin.
WORK
CITIES OF WEATHER
Short story collection
"Nominated for the Quebec Writers' Federation's McAuslan First Book Prize, Cities of Weather is a collection of short stories that place readers alongside quirky, loveable—and often hilarious—characters as they make their way through their lives. Each story builds in scope and significance until a final crescendo where characters must confront the fortunes they've prepared."
Cities of Weather was published by Riverbank Press, an imprint of Cormorant Books. Buy it now.
"THE SILENCES"
Short story
The Windsor Review, a literary journal based in my birth city, published this tale of denial and grief in October 2022. It's an excerpt from my novel in progress He's an Emergency. Read it here.
"Established in 1965, The Windsor Review is published biannually by the University of Windsor Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Department of English and Creative Writing."
Novelette
Big Fiction published this novelette (read it here) in fall 2020. It's an excerpt from my novel This Is It.
"Big Fiction provides a home for the novelette, that long form fiction that needs more breath than a short story...Long form prose is magic. It meanders, but it also takes aim. It accumulates just as it refines its full breadth into a singular nugget. It hangs out and makes a good mess of itself. It can encompass entire lifetimes—marriages, deaths, betrayals, redemptions—in its sweep."
"ALIENS"
Short story
Grain Magazine published this short story in their Queer Issue in summer 2020.
"Grain, the journal of eclectic writing, is a literary quarterly that publishes engaging, eclectic, and challenging writing and art by Canadian and international writers and artists. Every issue features superb new writing from both developing and established writers. Each issue also highlights the unique artwork of a different visual artist. Grain has garnered national and international recognition for its distinctive, cutting-edge content and design." Cover image by Adrian Stimson.
"TORONTO, 1937"
Excerpt from my novel This Is It
Editor Licia Canton published this piece in her 2021 anthology of stories, essays, and poems by queer Canadians of Italian heritage.
"Here and Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing is the most comprehensive volume yet of queer Italian-Canadian writing, and a milestone in Italian-Canadian studies and Canadian literature." A new volume was published in 2024, and included another one of my stories.
Published by Longbridge Books.
"Lucky"
Short story
The New Quarterly ran my story "Lucky" in their summer 2023 issue, which had the theme "creating tension." This is one of the tales from This Is It, my new novel in stories published in fall of 2024. It's starts as a quiet look at a saucy pre-teen, but twists up into a dramatic conclusion with huge narrative stakes. Read it here.
ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS
STARRED review from Quill & Quire for This Is It
"Balances thematic and formal complexity with bold characterization and vivid descriptions to create a work of significant emotional resonance. If you’re looking for a novel that will make you both think and feel in equal measure, This Is It is it...Fox’s depictions of major life transitions are sensitive and wise; this is riveting reading."
—From Quill & Quire
Canada's indie book site asks me about the unique format of the novel-in-stories, my character development process, and how my experiences living in various cities have shaped my storytelling.
—From All Lit Up
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.
I interview Margaret Atwood about publishing, essays, deities, and cold medication. An experience both charming and terrifying.
—From Maisonneuve
Pop Tart: Cheeky Authors in Undies reading at Montreal strip joint
Bugs Burnett interviews me, Daniel Allen Cox, Christopher DiRaddo, and Andy Sinclair ahead of a literary reading we did in our underwear.
—From the Montreal Gazette
The author of Bunny and Rouge interviews me about Ontario weirdness, pathetic fallacy, and my short story collection, Cities of Weather.
—From Books in Canada
A Canadian literary journal published my story from This Is It, and asked me to describe the places where I write and why I write there.
—From The New Quarterly
Th
Andrea Belcher warmly reviews my short story collection.
—From the Montreal Review of Books
A mostly upbeat review of my short story collection.
—From Quill & Quire
I review the biography of a Nobel Prize winner, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives by Robert Thacker.
—From Maisonneuve
WHERE AM I GOING, WHERE HAVE I BEEN?
I grew up in Ontario—Windsor and Toronto—before moving to Montreal, London and New York, where I received my MFA in fiction writing from The New School. I now live in Berlin, where I am working on a new novel. My next book, a novel in stories titled This Is It, was published in autumn 2024 by Enfield & Wizenty
I'm also the author of the short story collection Cities of Weather, which was shortlisted for the McAuslan First Book Prize by the Québec Writers' Federation. My writing has appeared in Grain, Big Fiction, Maisonneuve, Toronto Life, Books in Canada, Quill & Quire, Canadian Notes & Queries and the Toronto Star.
Some of my fiction has been anthologized, including in Fresh Men 2: New Voices in Gay Fiction edited by Don Weise and A Room at the Heart of Things edited by Elisabth Harvor. Excerpts from my novel This Is It appear in both editions of Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing edited by Licia Canton.