An audacious first novel by a "white hot" new writer When Elise Levine's short story collection, Driving Men Mad, was published, it caused a real stir. Now in this brilliant first novel she fulfils all the promise and then some.Requests and Dedications is set in the hip urban core of Toronto and in the city's outlying areas, where the countryside's working poor encounter the middle class in their monster homes. The story centres around a young woman, Tanis; her rough-edged horse-dealer uncle, Walker; Tanis's mother, Joy; and Walker's girlfriend, Mimi, a singer. Walker, an outsider, lives behind a veneer of toughness, belying his generous heart, and he is caught in the maelstrom of glamorous Mimi, who knows just how to use her charms to seduce all those around her. Then there is Tanis, self-sufficient, wise, irreverent. Gripped in her tearing relationship with her mother, and by her uneasy love of Walker, she is at the same time ready to break away from the tangle of this makeshift family, and does, until a tragic event changes everything. Gritty, raw, infused with a sparkling wit and an undercover poignancy, Requests and Dedications is a remarkable debut novel by a writer who knows exactly where the heart lives and why it's so hard sometimes to find it. Levine's characters, as they seek to transcend their constricted lives, are achingly human and unforgettable.