5.0
Mother and Child
By Carole MasoPublisher Description
A literary mediation on life and death, being and non–being, and the intense mystery and beauty of existence between a mother and child.
“Heartbreakingly perfect” (San Francisco Chronicle), Maso’s moving, dreamlike novel follows a mother and child as they roam through wondrous and increasingly dangerous psychic and physical terrain. A great wind comes, an ancient tree splits in half, and a bat, or possibly an angel, enters the house where the mother and child sleep, and in an instant a world of relentless change, of spectacular consequences, of submerged memory, and uncanny intimations is set into motion. What was once hidden is now in plain sight in all its splendor and terror as the mother and child are asked to bear enormous transformations and a terrible wisdom almost impossible to fathom. As the outside can no longer be separated from the inside, nor dream from reality, the mother and child continue, encountering along the way all kinds of characters and creatures as they move through a surreal world of grace and dread to the end.
“The tough–mindedness, originality and wit of her perceptions are intoxicating.”—Publisher Weekly
“By giving the conflicts in her life a fictional context, she tries to bring order and beauty—and some degree of understanding—to chaos.”—Library Journal
“Fully coherent, moving and elegiac, a genuine consolation.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Heartbreakingly perfect” (San Francisco Chronicle), Maso’s moving, dreamlike novel follows a mother and child as they roam through wondrous and increasingly dangerous psychic and physical terrain. A great wind comes, an ancient tree splits in half, and a bat, or possibly an angel, enters the house where the mother and child sleep, and in an instant a world of relentless change, of spectacular consequences, of submerged memory, and uncanny intimations is set into motion. What was once hidden is now in plain sight in all its splendor and terror as the mother and child are asked to bear enormous transformations and a terrible wisdom almost impossible to fathom. As the outside can no longer be separated from the inside, nor dream from reality, the mother and child continue, encountering along the way all kinds of characters and creatures as they move through a surreal world of grace and dread to the end.
“The tough–mindedness, originality and wit of her perceptions are intoxicating.”—Publisher Weekly
“By giving the conflicts in her life a fictional context, she tries to bring order and beauty—and some degree of understanding—to chaos.”—Library Journal
“Fully coherent, moving and elegiac, a genuine consolation.” —The New York Times Book Review
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5.0
Jojo in Wonderland
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“Rarely have I felt so fluid, vulnerable, and invaded as I did while reading Mother and Child. The landscape shifted throughout the novel but also beneath my feet as I read; it was hard to feel where the dreamlike (and sometimes nightmarish) world of the book began and I ended. One must read this book carefully, meditating upon each word, never assuming one knows exactly what is happening. The picture becomes murkier as it gains clarity and more piercing as it becomes more muddled. I could sense the urgency with which Maso wrote this work, and I will long be pondering the ways she wove her own experiences into the magical path of the novel.
I felt time. Fear. Loss. Birth and rebirth. The way we can all be eternal as long as existence exists if we think of the way we all touch every piece of everything through every piece of everything else. I felt carried on and away and almost too fast to breathe at moments.
This was the perfect marriage of the epic and the mundane, dreaming and waking.
I adored this book. I feel it will break my heart a little more every time I may read it in the future.”
About Carole Maso
Carole Maso is the author of ten books: Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, AVA, The American Woman in the Chinese Hat, Defiance, Aureole, Break Every Rule, The Room Lit by Roses, Beauty Is Convulsive, and Mother & Child. She has received numerous awards, including the Berlin Prize and the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction. Maso is currently a professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.
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