Graft Craft

Many readers will recognize Zoe Whittall’s name from her work as a comedy writer on the Baroness von Sketch Show, which earned her a Canadian Screen Award, and from her 2016 novel, The Best Kind of People, which was a national bestseller and shortlisted for the Giller Prize. (The writer and director Sarah Polley, who adapted Miriam Toews’s Women Talking, is working on a film version.) Whittall’s latest book, The Fake, is a whip-quick dramedy that combines the episodic quality of a television serial with the deep reflections of classic literature. Set in present-day Toronto, the novel centres on the interrelated lives of three troubled characters: Shelby, a hypochondriac reeling from her wife’s recent death; Gibson, a middle-aged divorcee pining for his ex-wife; and Cammie, a devious yet charismatic manipulator — and “the Fake” of the title.

The first...