The Book of Mother

'Marvelous, superbly affective ... A labor of love, which considers primal conflict [between a mother and her daughter] with a tender psychological acuity' New Yorker**

'An indelible portrait of a brilliant, beautiful, mad and maddening woman, expressing the joy of holding her mercurial attention and also the terrible cost of that intimacy...No-one who reads this captivating book will ever forget Maman' Andrew Solomon

A prize-winning tour de force when it came out in France, this brilliant translation of Violaine Huisman's 'witty, immersive autofiction showcases a Parisian childhood with a charismatic, depressed parent' (Oprah Daily. Beautiful and magnetic, Catherine, aka 'Maman', smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard and loves too extravagantly. During a joyful and chaotic childhood, her daughter Violaine wouldn't have it any other way.

But when Maman is hospitalised after a third divorce and breakdown, everything changes. Even as Violaine and her sister long for their mother's return, once she's back Maman's violent mood swings and flagrant disregard for personal boundaries soon turn their home into an emotional landmine. As the story of Catherine's own traumatic childhood and coming of age unfolds, the pieces come together to form an indelible portrait of a mother as irresistible as she is impossible, as triumphant as she is transgressive.

With spectacular ferocity of language, a streak of dark humor and stunning emotional bravery, The Book of Mother is an exquisitely wrought story of a mother's dizzying heights and devastating lows, and a daughter who must hold her memory close in order to let go.

A tableau that captures a filial love as fierce and frank as its central figure

Autorentext

Violaine Huisman was born in Paris in 1979 and has lived and worked in New York for twenty years, where she ran the Brooklyn Academy of Music's literary series and also organized multidisciplinary arts festivals across the city. Originally published by Gallimard under the title Fugitive parce que reine, her debut novel The Book of Mother was awarded multiple literary prizes including the Prix Françoise Saga and the Prix Marie Claire.

Leslie Camhi is a New York-based essayist and cultural journalist who writes for the New York Times, Vogue and other publications. She is a frequent contributor to artists' monographs and museum catalogues. The Book of Mother is her first book-length translation.

Klappentext

A prize-winning tour de force when it came out in France, this remarkable debut novel is about a daughter's inextinguishable love for her beautiful and charismatic, Mamam, who smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard and loves too extravagantly.

With dark humour and emotional bravery, Violaine Huisman tells an astonishing and ferociously compelling story about a woman who is as triumphant as she is transgressive.

An exquisite evocation of the passionate, reciprocal love that can illuminate its objects, or destroy them, or both'- Andrew Solomon Captures a filial love as fierce and frank as its central figure' -The New Yorker

`A prize-winning sensation in France ... witty, immersive' -Oprah Daily

`In this tender, searching book... the daughter figures as both a character in her mother's story and its teller, taking one last survey of the wreckage, as if her own life depends on it."-New York Times Book Review

"Camhi's translation from the French conveys Violaine's steady compulsion to understand and explain ... Love hurts; Huisman elegantly examines how and why."
-Kirkus