Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many "incidents."

Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust — starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?

At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid's genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old. (From Simon & Schuster)

We Spread is on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist. The final five books and the panellists who chose them will be revealed on Jan. 25, 2023.

CBC Books named We Spread one of the best works of Canadian fiction in 2022.

Iain Reid is an author from Kingston, Ont. His debut novel, the 2016 psychological thriller I'm Thinking of Ending Things, was adapted into a film by American writer and director Charlie Kaufman for Netflix. He is also the author of the memoirs One Bird's Choice and The Truth About Luck and the thriller Foe.

"I like the idea of trying to think about aspects of society and culture that might be unsettling or we depict a certain way, and that maybe doesn't seem accurate to me. In the case of We Spread, my grandma, when she was almost 100, had to be moved to a care facility. I was involved with that and was there with her a lot and saw her there. It got me thinking about that environment and what it would be like to be at that stage of life, but also about the culture of how we perceive the elderly, how we fear aging and have an obsession with youth and wanting to stay young.

"The setting of a care home seemed to provide a great background for all these ideas."