Subversive, captivating and vividly attuned to both the extraordinary and the mundane, Georgia Toews’ debut novel Hey, Good Luck Out There is a furious and hilarious journey through the relentless, soul-baring world of addiction and recovery.

After an amazingly unpleasant pizza party intervention, our twenty-two-year-old narrator checks into a women’s rehab facility, confined "for her own safety" without meaningful contact with the outside world. For escape, she and her fellow patients have only stilted phone calls with their disappointed and concerned parents, daily meetings in the form of inspirational speeches from wealthy ex-alcoholics and lifestyle gurus, visits to the doctor, and clandestine trips to a dingy internet cafe. For our narrator, a neon-pink journal gifted by her grandmother with gold embossed letters on the front—“Let Them Eat Cake!”—is her only comfort amid an endless carousel of strangeness and unease.

When she is discharged from rehab after thirty punishing days, returned to Toronto’s streets without resources, a job, or an apartment, and tasked with staying clean despite a seemingly bottomless urge to give up, the book asks: What next? What happens in the aftermath of your lowest low? Alone, and at war with an intrusive inner creature, at last she begins the process of making a home for herself in the world.

Hey, Good Luck Out There introduces a dynamic new voice in fiction: Georgia Toews is at once unguardedly truthful, gritty, and darkly funny, with a sardonic, wholly original sense of the absurd.

Georgia Toews' profile page

GEORGIA TOEWS has written for film and TV. Hey, Good Luck Out There is her first novel. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she now lives in Toronto.

"Toews weaves her lived reality with a powerful imagination and a keenly honed voice to create a novel that rings, at every point, of truth. . . . Hey, Good Luck Out There is a surprising, at times shocking, read. Toews writes commandingly not only of desperation and temptation, but of the world—and Toronto—as a whole. . . . Scarring and unforgettable, an essential reminder of our shared humanity, our common struggles." —Toronto Star

"Honest, funny, scary and beautiful. . . . Hey, Good Luck Out There does not follow a sensationalized rock-bottom-followed-by-redemption-arc of many addiction narratives, instead wandering a middle ground where recovery is an ongoing process, not a destination one arrives at." —Winnipeg Free Press

"Gritty and powerful. . . . Toews defies the reader's expectations for the story, dismissing easy platitudes in favour of the complex ambiguity of lived experience. . . . Hey, Good Luck Out There is a surprising, at times shocking, read. Toews writes commandingly not only of desperation and temptation, but of the world—and Toronto—as a whole. . . . Scarring and unforgettable, an essential reminder of our shared humanity, our common struggles." —Niagara Falls Review

"Hey, Good Luck Out There is riveting, blisteringly funny and keenly observed. Georgia Toews invites us into the rich and raw inner life of a brilliant young woman carving herself into being out of chaos. I couldn’t put this book down." —Sarah Polley, author of Run Towards the Danger

"An irreverent, provocative, laugh-out-loud hilarious portrait of a young woman’s journey through rehab and recovery. . . . At once vulnerable and brazen. Toews gives a new voice to addiction, one that highlights the world of female agency, friendship and desperation. A wonderful new voice to watch.” —Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads and The Lonely Hearts Hotel

"A harrowing, fiercely smart and miraculously funny debut, Hey, Good Luck Out There will grab your wrist and run, will break and quicken your heart. Georgia Toews writes it all out—disaster and addiction and persevering love—with unflinching grace and remarkable skill." —John K. Samson, singer-songwriter

"Hey, Good Luck Out There vividly evokes one young woman's struggle to negotiate the harrowing landscape of post-addiction adulthood. Georgia Toews' sad, angry and deeply lovable heroine flails and fails in ways both terrible and terribly funny." —Lynn Coady, author of Watching You Without Me and Hellgoing

"Written in honest, raw, unflinching prose, Hey, Good Luck Out There is a powerful story of a young woman’s journey through addiction and recovery. Georgia Toews imbues her narrator with heartbreaking vulnerability and searing authenticity, and writes with a stylistic authority and confidence rarely seen in a debut author. A haunting, unforgettable book by a bold new literary voice." —Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me and We’re All in This Together

"Georgia Toews accomplishes the most difficult thing: she shows how confusing it can be to be a person. With prose that is funny, charming and perceptive, Hey, Good Luck Out There depicts the real unglamorous scrabble toward any kind of life a person can bear to live." —Liz Harmer, author of Strange Loops and The Amateurs