An arresting, vividly imaginative collection of stories capturing the complexity of intimacy and the depths of the unravelling mind.
Infatuation and violence grow between two girls in the enchanting wilderness of postwar Australia as they spin disturbing fantasies to escape their families. Two young men in the midst of the 1968 French student revolts navigate — and at times resist — the philosophical and emotional nature of love. An orphaned boy and his estranged aunt are thrown together on a quiet peninsula at the height of the Troubles in Ireland, where their deeply rooted fear attracts the attention of shape-shifting phantoms of war.
The five long-form stories in A Song for Wildcats are uncanny portraits of grief and resilience and are imbued with unique beauty, insight, and resonance from one of the country's most exciting authors.
Available May 6, 2025
Pre-order from any bookstore you like or directly from the publisher (or request it from your local library)!
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The Toronto Star's "15 We Can't Wait to Read" and "25 Books to Read in 2025"
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“Exquisite as a noose fashioned from lace, as violent as arsenic served in a painted tea cup. With each story, Caitlin Galway crafts a delicious, gothic world informed by the morbid fascinations of its characters. Galway examines love with a microscope and uncovers its unspeakable qualities: the darkness of loyalty, the recklessness of devotion. The writing is suspenseful and gorgeous. A cross between Mavis Gallant and Shirley Jackson, between Patricia Highsmith and Louisa May Alcott. I loved it.” — Heather O'Neill, award-winning author of The Capital of Dreams and When We Lost Our Heads
"Caitlin Galway’s swooning prose breaks like waves through this sharply observed world tour of indelible characters tossed through time, rugged with loss and fraught with longing, where violence is often a whisper, sometimes a roar, and desire burrows like roots into their intimate histories." — Elan Mastai, author of All Our Wrong Todays
"There's a lot to admire about these stories—exquisite language, nuanced characterizations and sophisticated insights into desire, longing and identity. But what might be most striking is the unwavering authority of Caitlin Galway's storytelling, which recalls some of the great short fiction writers in the English language, particularly Grace Paley and Mavis Gallant. A Song for Wildcats is an outstanding collection by a writer to watch." — Pasha Malla, author of All You Can Kill
"Moving deftly between the real and surreal, A Song for Wildcats manifests the achingly familiar wounds from trauma, grief, family and mental health into strange realms. These stories, full of doppelgangers, malevolent spirits, and fairy wisps, speak in the language of wildcats: urgent, otherworldly, and impossible to ignore." — Paola Ferrante, Governor General's finalist for Her Body Among Animals
“A Song for Wildcats is a remarkable collection of five stories that move seamlessly through historical time periods and settings with a touch of the surreal. Whether it’s ghosts in Northern Ireland during The Troubles or doppelgangers in 1980s Las Vegas, Caitlin Galway’s striking and elegant prose transports you into the rich inner worlds of her raw but fiery characters. These urgent stories of desire, secrets, unconditional love, resistance, and survival are intimate, dreamlike, and profoundly affecting.” — Kathryn Mockler, author of Anecdotes, shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award
"Full of longing and desire, A Song For Wildcats weaves together love stories, ghost stories, and stories that reach for the magic at the edges of our world. With writing that is visceral, lyrical, and sensual, Galway’s stories are haunting and transportive — perfectly capturing the wildness of the human heart. A book to devour and an author to watch!" — Anuja Varghese, author of Chrysalis, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award
“This collection is lush, haunting, and touches on many themes that are incredibly tough, yet Caitlin Galway handles them with an expert touch. Along with her riveting prose and breathtaking attention to detail, the way Caitlin's writing approaches discussions of mental illness and trauma makes me feel utterly seen. With a dreamlike (or nightmare-ish?) quality that makes the reader feel as though they are walking through mist in some liminal space, A Song for Wildcats authentically exhibits what it's like to live with mental illness. Caitlin is a writer to watch, without a doubt. Pure talent.” — K.J. Aiello, author of The Monster and the Mirror
"Every self is a world and every sentence is a song in this collection of lush, delirious fiction. The book’s cast of glorious eccentrics—philosophers and doppelgangers, amateur occultists and enigmatic animals, queer Romantics and aspiring revolutionaries — stand in trembling but wholehearted defiance of the myriad banalities and cruelties that confront them. Profound as a swan song and mesmerizing as a siren song, A Song for Wildcats reminds us that a vivid imagination can bend space-time, and that each human action is imbued with a tender and merciless gravity. What absolute luck to be alive and reading books at the same time Caitlin Galway is writing them." — Jade Wallace, author of ANOMIA and Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There
“Caitlin Galway's A Song for Wildcats is a haunting collection of stories that span the world, the 20th century, and the human heart. A truly huge achievement, but it's the small details of Galway's characters that will stay with readers long after the book is back on the shelf.” — Rebecca Rosenblum, author of So Much Love, short-listed for the Trillium Book Award and the Amazon First Novel Award