Doubles (coming May 1, 2026)
Doubles takes place in 1968 in an institution for troubled youth, and is told from the perspective of a brilliant, spunky, 12-year-old girl who is obsessed with math. Engagingly written and often funny, this novella explores how a sensitive young teenager changes over a six-month period from a polite, quiet “good girl” into a delinquent. Although set in the past, Doubles has direct relevance to today, with our recently heightened awareness of the harsh reality in some of our residential institutions during that era (including for Indigenous children, but not only).
Advance Praise for Doubles
Doubles, Nora Gold’s elegant novella about a girl’s descent into sheer loneliness, has something of Mordecai Richler’s merciless wit, and also of Cynthia Ozick’s playfully somber storytelling. But most of all, Doubles reads like the work of an original literary voice—a voice endowed with tenderness, compassion, political memory, and clarity of moral vision. Nora Gold’s fiction keeps breaking one’s heart as it lives on in the reader’s memory.
— Maxim D. Shrayer, author of A Russian Immigrant and Zion Square
Nora Gold’s Doubles is a stunning novella about a twelve-year-old girl placed in an institution in 1968 after the death of her mother. Written with beautiful prose and assured deftness, Doubles is a powerful meditation on loss, as well as a breathtaking elegy for all children who are dependent for their well-being on a profoundly flawed child welfare system. Heartbreaking, gorgeous, and quietly devastating, Doubles is a tour de force.
— Zeeva Bukai, author of The Anatomy of Exile and The World Between
This novella is fantastic: well-written, great pacing and tension, with a sharp and unwittingly witty narrator. The ending is perfect and, in a way, redemptive and hopeful. An amazing book.
— Malcolm van Delst, author of Do The Wrong Thing
Nora Gold rises to new heights with her sixth book, Doubles. The novella is superficially simple, but really quite complex. The writing is beautiful. Serious ideas are expressed in this short but complicated book. Only an author of Nora Gold’s skill and experience could have pulled off this tour de force. Brava.
— Marion Hoffmann, author of Eva’s Daughters