The Incident Report - by Martha Baillie (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In a Toronto library, home to the mad and the marginalized, notes appear, written by someone who believes he is Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester from Verdi's opera. Convinced that the young librarian, Miriam, is his daughter, he promises to protect her from grief. Little does he know how much loss she has already experienced; or does he? The Incident Report, both mystery and love story, daringly explores the fragility of our individual identities. Strikingly original in its structure, comprised of 140 highly distilled, lyric "reports," the novel depicts the tensions between private and public storytelling, the subtle dynamics of a socially exposed workplace. The Incident Report is a novel of "gestures," one that invites the reader to be astonished by the circumstances its characters confront. Reports on bizarre public behaviour intertwine with reports on the private life of the novel's narrator. Shifting constantly between harmony and dissonance, elegant in its restraint and excitingly contemporary, The Incident Report takes the pulse of our fragmented urban existence with detachment and wit, while a quiet tragedy unfolds.

About the Author

Martha Baillie lives and works in Toronto. Her memoir There Is No Blue won the Hilary Weston Writers Trust non-fiction prize in 2025. Her novel The Incident Report was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was released as the feature film, Darkest Miriam, starring Britt Lower, in 2024. The Search for Heinrich Schlögel was an Oprah editors' pick. Sister Language, co-written with her late sister, Christina Baillie, was a 2020 Trillium Award finalist. Martha's nonfiction can be found in Brick: A Literary Journal. Her poetry has appeared in the Iowa Review. Her multimedia project based on The Search for Heinrich Schlögel is archived at www.schlogel.ca.