MOTHERCARE

"Masterfully-wrought . . . [A] stunning story of caregiving, with its questions of obligation and ethics and what it means to care for someone who, perhaps, didn't care for you." -The Boston Globe

From the brilliantly original novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman comes MOTHERCARE, an honest and beautifully written account of a sudden, drastically changed relationship to one's mother, and of the time and labor spent navigating the American healthcare system.

When a mother's unusual health condition, normal pressure hydrocephalus, renders her entirely dependent on you, your sisters, caregivers, and companions, the unthinkable becomes daily life. In MOTHERCARE, Tillman describes doing what seems impossible: handling her mother as if she were a child and coping with a longtime ambivalence toward her.

In Tillman's celebrated style and as a "rich noticer of strange things" (Colm Tóibín), she describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and anxious eleven years of caring for a sick parent.

MOTHERCARE is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.

Auteur

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory 1965-1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at The University of Albany, and lives in New York with bass player David Hofstra.

Texte du rabat

For readers of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, and Simone de Beauvior's A Very Easy Death, MOTHERCARE is an honest and beautifully written account of a sudden and drastically changed relationship with one's mother, and of the time and labor spent navigating the American healthcare system

When a parent's unusual health condition renders her entirely dependent upon you, your siblings, caregivers, and companions, the unimaginable will become daily life.

Brilliantly original novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman became one of nearly 53 million Americans who care for a sick family member when her mother developed an unusual and little understood condition called Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus.

Instantly, Tillman's independent and spirited mother went from someone she knew to someone else, a woman entirely dependent on her children-an eleven-year process through which her mother underwent many surgeries and some misdiagnoses, while the family navigated consultations and confrontations with doctors, adjusting to the complexity of her cognitive issues, including memory loss.

With her notoriously exquisite writing style and reputation as a "rich noticer of strange things" (Colm Toíbín), Tillman describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and frustrating years of caring for a sick parent.

MOTHERCARE is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver, responsible for the life of another-a parent, loved or not, or a friend. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.