Synopsis

It’s no secret that Sylvia is a little crazy. People have thought so ever since she first came to town when she was a teenager. But outside her own family, no one knows the depth of her mental illness. For her daughter, Mercy, Sylvia’s illness is at once a source of agony and fascination.

Mercy’s mother is absent from her life on several occasions. First, she is taken away to a mental hospital for treatment. Later, on a summer night in the early 1980s, Sylvia disappears entirely, never to be seen again. Her absence is pivotal in Mercy’s life.

Populated by an array of compelling characters — the mad mother, the lovelorn father, the crossdressing younger brother, the quirky grandmother — Love Object is a gripping account of the coming-of-age of a teenage girl in rural Ontario in the 1980s.