fiction

The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson

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The twenty-two chapters that make up this brief novel combine surprisingly poignant discussions between two women, one very young and one very old, with closely observed details of the natural world. The girl and her grandmother spend their summers together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland, while Papa is also somewhere about, working. Jansson, author of the Moomintroll comic strip and books, apparently based much of it on her own summers on a similar island.

Early on, six-year-old Sophia “woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead.” Although this death, almost an aside, is not mentioned again, we are reminded that summer and death go hand in hand: “summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” The transitory nature of life haunts the story and adds depth to the exchanges between Sophia and her grandmother.

The chapters are deceptively plain yet leave the reader aware that each seemingly normal summer adventure—diving into water, entertaining a friend, studying worms—holds a deeper meaning. Jansson’s simple and direct language invites consideration of subtext and metaphor. It leaves a silence similar to the white space around a line of poetry, space where a reader can bring forward her own memories. Surely you, too, have been here: “The forest was full of rustling and whispering. There was a wonderful smell of pine and damp moss. Everything was soft and springy underfoot. You could see a long way between the tree trunks, and here and there sunlight fell on patches of berries.”

I know Sophie and her grandmother as surely as though they are real people in my life. Avoiding sentiment and stereotypes, Jansson gives us a child with strong opinions who feels safe enough to voice them, and a grandmother who is ill and often in pain but who wants to help this child while she can. They speak the truth to each other—how rare is that between the very old and the very young? Such bluntness sometimes means expressing irritation or anger, yet they always speak with love.

They cheat at cards and argue about God. “Sophia asked how God could keep track of all the people who prayed at the same time. ‘He’s very, very smart,’ Grandmother mumbled sleepily under her hat. ‘Answer really,’ Sophia said. ‘How does He have time?’ ‘He has secretaries…’ “

A postcard of Venice leads the grandmother to explain that the city is sinking, and they build their own version of Venice, creating palazzos, bridges and gondolas: “There is something very elegant about throwing the plates out the window after dinner, and about living in a house that is slowly sinking to its doom.”

Most of all, they wander about exploring the island. They walk the shore looking for what the sea has washed up in the night. They are careful not to step on the fragile moss. “Step on it once and it rises the next time it rains. The second time, it doesn’t rise back up. And the third time you step on moss, it dies.” Fragility and protection run through the book. Sophia helps her grandmother when they crawl into the Magic Forest, a dense tangle of dead and living trees, twisted by the wind. Trying to clear a path or separate them “might lead to the ruin of the magic forest,” but left alone, “the trees slipped deeper and deeper into each other’s arms as time went by.’

Although the publisher indicates that the book is about a single summer, there are indications that these are fragments from several summers, floating up as memories do, one calling another, each so unexpected, so vivid, yet mysteriously connected. I came away thinking about the ways we take care of each other and of the natural world. I think about how we connect and what we pass on. This is a book I will come back to again and again.

Summer is a little more than half over for most of us. What has been your favorite summer read?

Beryl Blue, Time Cop, by Janet Raye Stevens

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Librarians! I admire them all. They know so much and are incredibly generous. So when I met a librarian who’d written a suspense story about a time-traveling librarian, how could I resist?

Beryl Blue, librarian-in-training, is going about her business one day in 2015—her business at that moment being shelving books—when she falls off a ladder and into an adventure. Caught by the mysterious Glo Reid who materializes from 2031, Beryl is given a mission to go back to 1943, where World War II is in full swing, and prevent a man from being killed. She—this perfectly ordinary young woman—is the only one who can eliminate the assassin.

It sounds far-fetched, but we quickly learn enough about her past—and her tendency to run away from trouble—to go along with it. To her consternation, the place where she has landed is her very own town, at least a past version of it.

Beryl’s story makes for an entertaining summer read. I especially liked the details from 1943: the slang, the music, the clothes. From the rooming house to the nightclubs, Beryl sticks with Sergeant Tom Sullivan and his mates while they celebrate their embarkation leave. He thinks he’s protecting her, while she knows it’s the other way around.

While keeping an eye out for the assassin even though she knows she’d never be able to actually kill him, Beryl struggles to answer Sully’s questions about where she’s from and why she—a single woman—is on her own. Her 21st century views on things like smoking and women’s roles are challenged by the mores of the period. Meanwhile, she is wondering why this one man’s life is essential to saving the future as she knows it.

Plot twists abound, challenging Beryl’s understanding of herself and leading to a satisfying conclusion. There are three more books in the series: something to look forward to.

What books do you turn to for light-hearted entertainment?

Clear, by Carys Davies

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In 1840s Scotland, John Ferguson makes the difficult decision to become one of the evangelical ministers leaving the Church of Scotland to help form the Free Church of Scotland. It means giving up his job and income, but at least his church will be free of patronage and interference from the British Government. Also, it’s not the life he’d promised his wife Mary, but she accepts his choice.

The other major political upheaval besides the Disruption of the Church of Scotland is the ongoing Highland Clearances in Scotland which saw wealthy rural landowners evicting tenant farmers to clear the land for cattle or sheep. Most of the people in my book club were not familiar with the Clearances, which caused immense poverty and fury among the rural poor. A couple of us knew about them through our reading or family stories, but none of us had heard of the Disruption.

Desperate for funds, John jumps at the offer of a temporary, well-paying job as a factor. His assignment is to travel to a remote Scottish island and evict the lone remaining inhabitant—Ivar—so the island may be turned over to sheep. However, soon after arriving on the island he’s badly injured in a fall from a cliff.

Ivar finds the unconscious man and takes him into his home to nurse him. For a long period, John does not remember why he is there and busies himself learning Norn, the ancient language used by Ivar, so the two can communicate.

This lovely story is told in through three perspectives: Ivar, John and Mary. The author’s descriptions of the lonely island and Ivar’s life there are stunning both for their beauty and their authenticity. I especially enjoyed the language lessons, using actual Norn words that are poetic in their precision, such as the word “for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something.”

It’s also a story of connection, of how a life of isolation and solitude can be transformed by the arrival of another human being. The author’s spare, elegant prose turns the book into, as one member of my book club said, a real gem.

Curiously, everyone in the book club understood the ending differently. No spoilers here, though many reviewers have criticised the ending as abrupt and unearned. For us, even though we read it aloud several times, we still understood it to mean different things.

That’s okay with me. I don’t mind endings where the story seems to go on after you close the book. In fact, the different endings we came up with said more about each of us that they did about the book. One person suggested we write to the author and ask her to write a sequel, though that mostly reflected our desire to spend more time with the characters.

I do mind when the ending is unearned. I believe the story could have prepared the ground for it a little better, but I actually liked it as it is.

If you enjoyed Small Things Like These, you might enjoy this story. I certainly did, and that was one thing that my book club did agree on: we all were immensely glad to have read it.

What books set on a Scottish island have you enjoyed?

The Strand Magazine, Issue LXXV 2025

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A new story by Graham Greene? And a new one from Ian Fleming, too? Wow! I had to send for this issue.

Greene’s story is a departure from his usual explorations of moral ambiguity in the worlds of diplomats and spies, which he knew from having been recruited by MI6, as well as the Catholic faith and imperialism. “Reading at Night” is an entertainment indeed: a ghost” story, reminiscent of classic British ghost stories such as those described in Ghostland, by Edward Parnell.

A man who is traveling on the Côte d’Azur stays in a borrowed house has a nervous disposition, traumatised by a boyhood reading of Dracula. He picks up an anthology of stories to read himself to sleep, but unfortunately the one he lights on . . . Well, Greene shares the story with us and it’s disturbing and mysterious. When our man becomes too terrified to read any more, he puts the book aside and turns out the light. Then . . .

I found myself going back to look for what Donald Maass calls promise words: words that tell you what to expect in the story. I found plenty that helped create the ominous atmosphere, the sense of being outside of the natural world, and the suspense.

Ian Fleming’s “The Shameful Dream” is not about James Bond, but rather a story of psychological suspense as a successful literary editor, Caffrey Bone, drives toward the home of the Chief. Lord Ower has invited Bone for the evening at The Towers and to spend the night. Gradually, though, we learn the reasons why he wishes the invitation had been sent to someone—anyone—other than himself. Plenty of promise words in this sentence alone:

Bone stared moodily ahead at the rain and the dripping hedgerows and at the shaft of the headlights probing the wet tarmac of the secondary road which would bring him in due course to The Towers.

I had heard of The Strand Magazine in its British incarnation. From 1891-1950 it published short fiction and general interest articles and was perhaps best known for being the first in the U.K. to publish Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and some of Agatha Christie’s. I somehow missed that it was revived in 1998 in the U.S. The magazine features stories from emerging crime and mystery writers in addition to stories by established writers. These are genres that I often turn to, and I thoroughly enjoyed this entire issue.

Aside from the stories by Greene and Fleming, there are two by writers I’m familiar with—Denise Mina and C.J. Box—and two by authors new to me—Mike Adamson and John M. Floyd. All are excellent. What a box of wonders! To top it off there’s a fascinating talk with Amor Towles, author of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway, and pages of reviews of additional mysteries and thrillers.

Sometimes it seems as though there are too many magazines and too little time, but The Strand is one I now intend to make time for.

Have you read a magazine full of short stories lately? Tell me about it.

Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler

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I’ve been a fan of Anne Tyler’s novels from the get-go. She writes about my kind of people and the place I lived in for most of my life. I slip into her stories as though they’d been tailored just for me—and never more so than with this latest book.

Assistant head in one of those posh private schools Baltimore is known for, Gail is shocked one Friday morning when her boss discloses that she’s decided to retire, and the new head is bringing her own assistant with her. Gail’s response is to simply walk out of the school, leaving everything behind her.

She thinks that maybe she could go back to teaching math somewhere, but first she must deal with her daughter’s wedding on Saturday. The future mother-in-law has taken over arranging everything, and Gail feels obliged to leave her to it since the in-laws are paying for everything.

Her boss says Gail lacks people skills, but she does have a sharp eye and a tart tongue. I found myself snorting with laughter over her asides, laughing more at myself than at her. “I wondered why it was that I had so many irritating people in my life.” She reminds me of my grandmother when she was feeling cranky. She reminds me of myself.

It is Gail’s voice as narrator that truly carries the story and makes it impossible to put down. She may hide her emotions from others but she’s scrupulously open when it comes to her own thoughts. She says, “Sometimes when I find out what’s on other people’s minds I honestly wonder if we all live on totally separate planets.”

Just as she is settling into her day at home, the doorbell rings and it is her ex-husband Max, who’s brought along a cat he is fostering and thus cannot stay with his daughter; her fiancé is allergic. Thus begins three days of the two of them bumping up against each other, falling into familiar patterns and even developing new in-jokes.

The marriage of your only child rouses echoes of the past, in Gail’s case exacerbated by one of her former boyfriends turning up at the wedding. We gradually come to understand how Gail and her family got to where they are now and what choices they are going to have to make.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Anne Tyler’s books is her compassion for her characters, all of them. I truly felt that I knew Gail and commiserated with her as she tries to find her footing in a changing world. I’m charmed by this portrait of a marriage, odd and bumpy and interrupted as has been through the years.

Do you have a favorite Anne Tyler book?

Loitering with Intent, by Muriel Spark

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We meet Fleur Talbot sitting in a graveyard in Kensington writing a poem, when a young policeman approaches her. It’s 1949. Young Fleur, eager to collect experiences that she can use in her writing, rejoices in “how wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.” She makes friends everywhere “almost by predestination.” When the friendship pales, she says, “You didn’t think of discarding them just because you didn’t altogether like them.”

Her friend Dottie—one of many hilarious and perfect names in this book—is ”a Catholic, greatly addicted to the cult of the Virgin Mary about whose favors she fooled herself quite a bit.” She seems unconcerned that Fleur is having an affair with her lackluster husband Leslie. Fleur says she loves him “off and on, when he doesn’t interfere with my poetry and so forth. In fact I’ve started a novel which requires a lot of poetic concentration, . . . So perhaps it will be more off than on with Leslie.”

Light-hearted Fleur gaily sidesteps small matters like having money for rent and other necessities while she finishes her first novel, Warrender Chase. When a friend finds her a job at the Autobiographical Association, helping its posh members write their memoirs, she is eager to observe them. The Association is the brainchild of  Baronet Sir Quentin Oliver. He set it up so that the memoirs will not to be published for 70 years to avoid offending anyone named in them.

There we meet a truly quirky crew. The one who most delights me is Sir Quentin’s elderly and outrageous mother Edwina. She comes out with the most inconvenient truths and loses control of her bladder at will, much to Sir Quentin’s embarrassment. The two tangle constantly, and it is ruthless Edwina who usually comes out the winner.

Almost immediately Fleur becomes suspicious of Sir Quentin’s intent, eventually calling him a “psychological Jack the Ripper.” However, she believes in writing about terrible sins ”with a light and heartless hand. It seems to me a sort of hypocrisy for a writer to pretend to be undergoing tragic experiences when obviously one is sitting in relative comfort with a pen and paper.”

She’s surprised to find that Sir Quentin seems to become more and more like her protagonist Warrrender Chase. Then the lives in the memoirs she’s typing up begin to mirror other characters in her novel, leading Sir Quentin to threaten to sue her publisher to stop publication of her novel. She claims that her novel came first, but this slippery novel keeps you wondering who is making up what, and how on earth it will all work out.

It may be offbeat and joyful, but the novel offers plenty of plot twists—a stolen manuscript, suspicious deaths—and for those who care to look deeper, some interesting things to say about a writer’s purpose and methods, not to mention their sources of inspiration. Underlying the witty story is a Modernist conundrum about whether people give rise to literary characters or vice versa. How do we construct the selves we present to the world or to ourselves?  

Or you can ignore all that and just enjoy the sparkling dialogue. The unexpected lurks around every corner, and you never know when Edwina will let loose a “fluxive precipitation.”

What Muriel Spark novels have you read?

Earthly Joys, by Phillipa Gregory

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We meet John Tradescant, gardener to Sir Robert Cecil, as he discusses the state of the gardens with his master in preparation for the visit of the new king: James I. Since Queen Elizabeth died without heirs, James—son of Mary, Queen of Scots and already King of Scotland—has ascended to the throne of England. The story is told by John himself, who is based on the real John Tradescant the Elder, the most celebrated horticulturalist and naturalist of his age.

As a gardener, John has no power in politics; he keeps his gaze focused on the plants and trees that he loves. However, knowing that “he could keep a secret, that he was a man without guile, with solid loyalty,” Cecil uses this principled and practical man as a sounding board, confiding that he has been working in secret to prepare James Stuart to rule in England. James brings two great advantages: he already has two sons and a daughter, and he is Protestant. Thus, it’s assumed he will end the turmoil over the succession and the bitter and deadly religious wars.

John is asked to design magnificent gardens at Hatfield, Windsor, and others. In his work for Cecil and later other lords and James’s successor Charles I, John is sent abroad in search of rare plants. His finds are described with such care that I could see, smell and feel them: the smoothness of a horse chestnut seed, the rainbow sheen of tulips, the scent of cherry blossoms. It turns out that he loves traveling and finding exotic varieties of plants and rarities, much to the dismay of his wife and son, left at home.

This book was recommended to me for its evocation of Tudor and Stuart era gardens, making it an appropriate read for this blossoming midsummer. I was also intrigued by my memory of Gregory’s amazing nonfiction book Normal Women that spoke to the range and depth of her research into the period. What I didn’t consider was how much the concerns of people in 17th century England would echo ours today.

As they discuss the new king, John tells Cecil, “When you have a lord or king . . .  you have to be sure that he knows what he’s doing. Because he’s going to be the one who decides what you do . . . Once you’re his man, you’re stuck with him  . . . He has to be a man of judgment, because if he gets it wrong then he is ruined, and you with him.”

And James is not a man of judgment. He immediately begins plundering the treasury Elizabeth amassed to protect England, squandering it on his own pleasures and rewards to his friends, while ignoring the discontent, poverty and starvation of his subjects. A favorite emerges in his hedonistic court: the Duke of Buckingham: young, beautiful, and self-indulgent. After Cecil’s death, Buckingham brings John to work for him as gardener and personal servant, even taking him into battle.

Civil war is brewing, as the people protest. Parliament is furious when the King takes over their power to impose taxes and sends them home as no longer needed. The King then gets needed income by selling baronetcies and other dignities. Many begin to question the traditional concept of the divinity of kings, seeing James as not someone ordained by God, but rather as simply a man and a repulsive, dishonest one at that.

John, however, is loyal, too loyal according to his wife. John is challenged not just by her, but also by his increasingly radical son who argues that people should be free to obey their own principles, not be ordered what to think by kings and lords. While John’s obdurate loyalty to his masters—even when he thinks they are wrong—can be frustrating for a reader today, it reflects the culture of the time, which was only just beginning to hear the whispers of the individualism we take for granted today.

Another aspect that is true to the time but troubling today is the quantity of foreign plants that John introduces to England. Many have become common to English gardens and forests today, but I couldn’t help thinking about the dangers of invasive species: plants and creatures that originally seemed innocent or useful but have become a nightmare.

While politics and philosophy struck surprisingly close to home for me, they took second place to the gardens. I luxuriated in descriptions of planning everything from orderly knot gardens to seemingly natural meadow gardens. I felt I was laboring along with John and his wife and son to build these joyful works of art. 

Are you a gardener?

A Piece of the World, by Christina Baker Kline

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Most people are familiar with Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. However, little has been known about Christina Olson herself aside from the fact that she had a degenerative muscular disorder that eventually made her unable to walk. Another tidbit of knowledge has been that Wyeth often painted not only Christina and her brother, but also the house on the Olson farm in the small town of Cushing, Maine.

My interest in Andrew Wyeth’s work intensified when I visited a 2014 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Looking Out, Looking In concentrated on Wyeth’s paintings of windows. I already loved his famous Wind from the Sea, and became fascinated by his spare watercolors of other windows in the Olson house and others nearby. There are no people in these works, but their lives are somehow embedded in these spaces.

In his Director’s Note to the catalogue, Earl A. Powell III calls Wyeth’s window paintings “skillfully manipulated constructions deeply engaged with the visual complexities posed by the transparency, beauty, and formal structure of windows.” For my part, the theme named in the title remains a powerful one. Whether we are looking out or in, we see both the wide outside and the very personal interior. Also, I am deeply in love with houses, especially those which hold the story of my life.

In this novel, Kline has taken the woman whose image is so familiar and opened her life to us. In her own words, Christina recounts her childhood as a smart girl who wanted to become a teacher but had to leave school to help at home. She has a brief period of social life and a chance at love before her increasing disability keeps her tied to the farm while her friends went on to marry and have children. When one of her friends marries Wyeth, he and Betsy begin spending summers in Cushing, and he starts painting at the Olson’s.

It is Christina’s voice, though, that fascinates me. Amid the constant domestic toil, the brief joy of sweetpeas blooming, the interactions with her parents and brother, her growing friendship with Wyeth, her voice is genuine: stoic and reserved, occasionally ecstatic. I felt as though I lived through each day with her, each turn of the season.

I am wary of novels with real people as characters; it feels like an invasion of privacy to create a story of someone without their permission or knowledge. However, I loved Kline’s thoughtful understanding of what it might mean for a sensitive young woman to have to live such a restricted life—not just her physical restrictions, but also the small town, the confining house, the loneliness as friends and neighbors pull away. I had a tiny surprise: the Olsons were related to Nathaniel Hawthorne, as I am myself, making Christina perhaps a distant cousin.

The limitations of her life mean the story is thin on plot, and Wyeth himself is but a minor character. The real joy of this story for me is the immersion in this woman living a life I could so easily have fallen into. In the story, Christina says of the famous painting:

He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) My ancestors fled to Maine from Salem, but like anyone who tries to run away from the past, they brought it with them. Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before.

Have you read a book inspired by a painting?

The Collected Regrets of Clover, by Mikki Brammer

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Clover, a quirky, awkward, and introverted 36-year-old, is fine living alone. She observes friendships and romances in films and the uncurtained window of the apartment across the street, but she has little need of them herself. It’s too hard to explain to people that what she knows best is death—death and the dying.

At five, Clover witnessed her kindergarten teacher’s death. Then, only a year later, her parents died in an accident while on vacation while traveling, leaving her to be brought up by her grandfather in New York City. She still lives in his West Village apartment, although he, too, died some years ago while she was traveling. Partly out of guilt at not being there for him, she became a death doula.

I’d never heard of a death doula, but apparently it’s a thing. Clover holds the hands of the dying, listens to their stories, helps them sort out their affairs. We all seek to understand the great mystery of death, don’t we? For Clover, the clues lie in their last words, which she writes in three journals that she has titled “Regrets,” “Advice,” and “Confessions.” She also likes to attend death cafés, where people gather to discuss death and share their experiences. Even there she’s only an observer. Her only real friend is Leo, her elderly black neighbor, who had been her grandfather’s best friend.

Things start to change when she meets Sebastian at a death café. He says he’s afraid of death and asks her to spend time with his dying grandmother. Ninety-one-year-old Claudia turns out to be a firecracker, a former journalist, whose one regret inspires Clover to go in search of the man from Claudia’s past. At the same time, Sebastian keeps turning up and—to her horror—eventually asks her out. When a friendly woman her age moves into the apartment downstairs, Clover tries to avoid having to meet her, but fails. Sylvie’s kindness and normalcy throw Clover’s isolation into relief and begin to wear down her resistance.

This intricate and surprising story manages to sidestep sentimentality and cliché. We are deep in Clover’s point of view as she reflects on her past decisions, her relationships, and the choices she has made. The author has blended these flashbacks into the story beautifully; also Clover’s introspective moments are handled well.  

I found this a lovely story, quiet and deep. Clover’s inexperience with social customs felt unforced and real, as did her compassion for and insight into those who are at the end of their lives. She shares a few tidbits from her three journals; I would love to read more.

Have you ever read a story about a death doula?

How to Love Your Daughter, by Mila Blum

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Translated from Hebrew by Daniella Zamir

As this short introspective novel opens, Yoella has come from Israel to Groningen in the Netherlands to stand outside her daughter Leah’s home. She does not approach the door. Instead she looks in at a window to see Leah with her husband and two children. It has been ten years since she has seen her beloved daughter, during which men would occasionally call her to say her daughter was safe but hiking in Nepal or some such place without phone connectivity. She has only just learned that it was all a lie. Leah, now 28, has been here all this time.

And because I was watching my daughter and her family without their knowledge, I was vulnerable to witnessing what wasn’t mine to witness.

Such a rift begins to seem impossible as Yoella describes her immense love for baby Leah. We are entirely in her mind, absorbing her memories and insights, with only a rare piece of dialogue or gesture recounted to indicate what Leah and Meir’s perspectives might be.

My love for my baby daughter came easily. Her father was also in love with her; we talked about her every night after she fell asleep, thanked each other for the gift that was our girl. Everything that I had been denied I gave to her, and then some. And she loved me too.
 

In a quiet, mesmerizing voice, Yoella moves back and forth in time, describing Leah’s perfect childhood—a star at school and in her ballet classes—and the tight bond between the two of them. Yoella’s husband Meir is older and busy with his work, yet he, too, adores the child. The two of them seem to have a special understanding.

The fractures appear as she begins to reveal tidbits from her own troubled childhood and the silences in her relationship with Meir. Woven into her thoughts are brief insights about mothers and daughters from the stories she’s reading by authors such as Anne Enright, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro.

I think we are supposed to be in suspense about the cause of their rift until near the end of the book. However, the suffocating nature of this woman’s all-consuming love for her daughter, made me want to run away from her almost from the beginning, and I’m not even related to her. She’s the kind of mother who follows her daughter everywhere, kisses her on the lips even as she’s leaving home at 18, and prefers to cuddle close and sleep in her daughter’s bed rather than her husband’s. She makes me appreciate my own mother’s distance.

The writing is lovely and the chapters very short; Yoella doesn’t linger in any fragment of memory for long. It becomes an interesting psychological portrait, as she reveals—perhaps without meaning to—the way she manipulates Leah, and the lies and evasions she uses to paper over the cracks in her life.

The mother-daughter relationship is an endless source of interesting variations. That this one came to feel to me like a horror story probably says more about me than the book. It certainly made me reflect on my life with my own mother and with my children. There are so many ways we can go wrong, so many ways we can inadvertently injure these vulnerable beings we are responsible for. Yoella says we are all “… survivors, everyone was given either too much or too little, life is always a long journey of healing from childhood.”

What story about mothers and daughters has moved you?