Review of Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before
By Tea Gerbeza
Content note: this review contains spoilers. Read at your own discretion.
Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024) is unlike any apocalypse novel I’ve ever read; it’s a refreshing perspective on humanity at the end of the world. The people in this novel do not become the worst versions of themselves; instead, Krause’s vibrant characters remain generous and kind and community oriented. No one takes more than they need at the grocery store, pilots—after systems have gone down—fly planes so that others can get back to their families, and others decorate whole cities with paper chains and snowflakes just to bring small joys in an unfathomable time. In fact, small joys and creativity are at the forefront of what’s meaningful to the book and its characters. These joys offer hope, even if we know the end.
Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024)
Throughout the novel, the reader, unknowingly, lives within a nesting doll of memory. Cues of this involves Nora’s cat—simultaneously with Nora, with her parents, and at a neighbour’s—and the uncanny déjà vu the characters experience. Krause cleverly hones her book’s concept through the several perspectives she weaves throughout the book, noting any small change to the overarching memory of the end as intense déjà vu for each respective character. As Marlen’s book says, “It’s the beginning of the same as last time, but better” (294). This time, the time we’re reading, Alfie is not alone when she dies, Jacob is with Nora for the end, and Ole is found—“like last time, but better.” Krause is masterful in revealing what’s at play in the book through her endearing characters, leaving us hanging onto every chapter’s end with a desire to keep going to find what happens next. If they all do, in fact, die. “You die, but also, you’re immortal. You never die” (289), Hilda quotes from Marlen’s book (a mirror reality to theirs), and it is this comfort that Krause leaves us with: like her characters, we, too, will live beyond the page. I Think We’ve Been Here Before is a tender and devastating novel that will call you back to it well after you close its pages.
Reviewer Tea Gerbeza. Photo credit: Ali Lauren.
About Tea Gerbeza:
Tea Gerbeza (she/her) is the author of How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press, 2025). She is a queer, disabled poet, writer, editor, and multimedia artist creating in oskana kâ-asastêki in Treaty 4 territory (Regina, SK) and on the Homeland of the Métis. She primarily works with paper in her visual art, but also creates digital works on her scanner (scanography). Her writing and artwork focus on themes of reclaiming disabled identity, disability justice, the Bosnian diaspora, queer platonic friendships, and the complexities of pain. Her artwork has been exhibited at The Art Gallery of Regina. Tea is one of four Pain Poets.
Most recently, her poem “Body of the Day” was a People’s Choice Award finalist in Contemporary Verse 2’s 2024 2-Day Poem Contest. In 2022, Tea won the Ex-Puritan’s Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for poetry. She also made the longlist for Room magazine’s 2022 Short Forms contest. In 2019, Tea’s poetry won an Honourable Mention in the 2019 Short Grain Contest. Her scanograph, “My Father Catches Me Confronting Memory,” won an Honourable Mention in Room magazine’s 2020 Cover Art Contest, and she was a finalist for Palette Poetry’s 2021 Emerging Poet Prize. In 2023, Tea was recognized by SK Arts as one of 75 strong emerging artists that makes the future of Saskatchewan arts exciting.
Tea holds a BA (Hons.) in English (2017) and an MA in Creative Writing and English from the University of Regina (2019). Tea’s thesis work for her MA was SSHRC funded. She also holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan (2021).
When not doing any of these things, Tea goes on bike rides with her spouse, does puzzles, or reads poetry to her three dogs and cat, Tonks, Ghost, Fenway, and Fig.