Order UTOPIA in Canada from your favourite local bookseller (mine are Type and Flying Books) or order from here or here
Named Best Ficiton of 2022, THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Best Canadian Fiction of 2022, CBC BOOKS
An Indigo Books Most Anticipated Book 2022
London Review Bookshop Summer Pick 2022
Giller Prize Craving CanLit Pick
CBC August Book Pick + Here And Now Book Club Pick
A Globe and Mail Summer Book Pick
PRESS
“Utopia takes you Inside LA’s Explosive 1970s Feminist Art Scene” — AnOther Magazine
“Heidi Sopinka’s Utopia is a unique examination of sex, death, and art. “ —Irish Independent Review
“Mesmerizing.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“Sopinka excels in characterization and the evocation of the power of creation.” — Shelf Awareness
Praise for UTOPIA
“Utopia is a marvel. Vividly beguiling on art, love, and what it means to be alive, every page thrums with magic.”
—Sophie Mackintosh, Booker Prize–nominated author of The Water Cure and Blue Ticket
“These brilliant and bold artists explode off the page as they try to transcend the boundaries of the material world in their work. But the most dangerous waters they must navigate are those of the male-dominated world of the 1970s, which erases their art and identities. Sopinka explores the minefield that is loving men in an oppressively patriarchal world. And she captures the volatility and power of female friendships, and the uncharted maps of women's untameable artistic drives.”
—Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads
“With tense and glittering writing, Heidi Sopinka’s Utopia blasts the dry desert sun onto the lives and afterlives of a circle of Californian artists, the women they are and the women they love. This is a thrilling book about artistic inheritance, jealousies and affinities.”
—Leanne Shapton, author of Guestbook and Swimming Studies
“Utopia is a bird’s eye view of the desires of the human heart . . . through characters who feel and live deeply at the boundaries of art and life. Sopinka’s luminescent prose tackles the danger and vitality of artistic and bodily desire under the politically charged structures of masculine power . . . with rawness, deep awareness, and razor-sharp critique. . . . This is an urgent book.”
—Angélique Lalonde, Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings
"I was transfixed by Heidi Sopinka’s incandescent prose. It blazed through me and touched my heart in the deepest, most tender place. Utopia is about a powerful bond between mother and daughter; the collision of art, performance, and female friendships; and how grief shapes our ability to love and hope. Sexy, devastating, and wise—this novel will make you feel alive."
—Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair
"Utopia is a study in contrasts: tart and poetic; sensitive and wild; bright and spooky like the LA light. It drove me onward; it let me linger. It made me angry; it inspired me. Above all, it clinches what we all suspected from The Dictionary of Animal Languages — Heidi Sopinka is a crazy good writer. I'd follow her anywhere."
—Lauren Elkin
“Utopia is a searing novel about art, ownership, and the entanglement of power and performance. Heidi Sopinka’s sentences have a bluish-orange intensity, a captivating energy that conjures a desert at dusk.”
—Makenna Goodman, author of The Shame
“Flames of female rage run hot in this shimmering art-world ghost story. . . . Sensual, mysterious, and provocative, Utopia raises essential questions about women’s marginalization in the art world, loss of self and search for artistic grounding, the maternal impulse, and the demands of a life in art.”
—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint It Black
“Utopia is interested in life as performance, in the ways that we attempt to transcend our own bodies, and in what it means to be a woman artist in a world that is run by and for men. Set against the backdrop of the arid California desert, full of scalding cups of diner coffee and burning tarmac highways, this is a book as seething as its parts.”
—Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes
“Tense, sexy, and uncanny. Utopia shimmers with desert heat and burns with atmosphere. It’s Rebecca meets Zabriskie Point. Luminous.”
—Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur
"Sopinka’s promising second novel–-part psychological thriller, part ghostly love story with bright notes of Rachel Kushner-–is set amidst the male-dominated hustle of the late-1970s New York art world."
—The Globe and Mail