A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves You Won''t Get Free Of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other (and for themselves), of bonds broken and renewed. With uncanny depth of perception, Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in six essays, five originally published in the New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book. ''I wrote some of these stories feeling, existentially, like a daughter, and now I have returned to them with a different identification,'' Aviv writes. ''It was as if I had failed to see the drama that was on the mother''s side, too - her particular longings and humiliations and needs.'' Aviv renders one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people''s children. In the final story, about the writer Alice Munro''s family, a daughter''s abuse is erased by her family, only to be recast by her mother in stories celebrated around the world. You Won''t Get Free Of It is an astonishing exploration of the competing dynamics of knowing and unknowing, recognition and refusal, that shape this foundational relationship. Illuminating ineffable registers of human experience, Aviv asks piercing questions about how disowned knowledge can form and deform a family and a life.

Autorentext

RACHEL AVIV is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes about psychology, medical ethics and criminal justice, among other subjects. She is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and the winner of a George Polk Award and a National Magazine Award. Her 2022 book, Strangers to Ourselves, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in Brooklyn, New
York.

Klappentext

Real-life stories of mothers and daughters - of what we inherit, what we bury and what we, finally, find the courage to say - by the award-winning New Yorker staff writer.

'She is simply brilliant' Anne Enright
'A beautiful, thoughtful and probing writer' Daisy Johnson

You Won't Get Free of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other and for themselves. Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in seven essays, six originally published in the New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book.

Aviv writes about one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people's children. In the final story, a daughter's traumatic experience is erased by her family, only to be recast by her mother, the writer Alice Munro, in stories celebrated around the world.

You Won't Get Free of It is an astonishing exploration of the competing dynamics of knowing and unknowing, recognition and refusal, that shape our most foundational relationship.

PRAISE FOR STRANGERS TO OURSELVES

'An arresting work of profound empathy and insight' Patrick Radden Keefe
'Combines the poise of Janet Malcolm and the confessional bravery of Joan Didion' Vogue
'Profoundly intelligent' Guardian