Former Peterborough resident Kerry Clare has just released her latest novel “Definitely Thriving” published by House of Anansi Press.

It will be launched in Peterborough on Thursday, March 26 at Take Cover Books, 59 Hunter St. E. from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., where she will discuss the book with Megan Murphy.

“Definitely Thriving” is the story of Clemence, a young woman reeling from a separation and layoff who moves back to her hometown. While trying to piece her life back together, she encounters some surprising situations and people along the way.

When asked what inspired her to write the book, Clare replied, “In 2021, when the pandemic was going strong, I decided I wanted to write a book that would make me happy, and which was all about everything I was missing, namely people and community.”

Female friendship is a theme in all of her books.

“Writing about friendship is one of my favourite ways to build character in fiction,” she said. “As readers we learn so much about characters when we can see their connections to other people who know them through and through. The dialogue is also fun to write and these are definitely relationships worth exploring.”

Echoes of the character Bridget Jones from “Bridget Jones’s Diary” appear in Clemence, an awkward yet endearing protagonist who is unlucky in love.

“When I wrote the novel, I actually thought I was writing against Bridget Jones,” she continues. “I loved that movie when it came out (I liked the book too, but liked the movie better). But eventually I became embarrassed about how much it had meant to me.

“I remembered its slapstick humour, that Bridget makes a fool of herself, and misremembered it all as 1990s’ era toxic misogyny. Was I ever wrong. I rewatched the movie last year and found it as fresh and endearing as ever. Bridget knows her value through and through, and so does Clemence, so there’s actually quite a kinship between them that surprised me when I realized it.”

Books are almost another character in the book. Clemence works part time in an antiquarian bookshop, and is a freelance indexer for publishers. Clemence loves books, especially the physicality of them — the older and dustier the better. A very traumatic scene was the flashback to her marriage when her former husband digitizes all of her books and gets rid of the physical copies.

“What her husband did to her book collection is unforgivable — and justifies any and every terrible thing she does to him,” she says.

“I was so happy to write a bookish novel, and bring in my own love of books and reading and women authors in particular. All my fiction rides on the literary coattails of writers I love to read, and I welcomed the opportunity to be quite blatant about that in this book.”

Clare is also the author of “Asking for a Friend,” “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” and “Mitzi Bytes.” She also works as an editor at 49thShelf.com, a website that reviews Canadian books.

Clare grew up in Peterborough and now lives in Toronto with her family. She attended the former Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School, where she says her imagination and creativity were nurtured and where her love of books and reading was supported.

She has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in creative writing, both from the University of Toronto. She says she used to read The Peterborough Examiner from cover-to-cover and wrote articles for the Youth Quake section.

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