The Book of Mother

The names of Huisman's characters will provoke discussion of the novel as autofiction, but the story here is bigger than that. Love hurts; Huisman elegantly examines how and why

Huisman's excellent debut chronicles the life of a charming but volatile Frenchwoman... Huisman's storytelling ability is immense: Violaine unfurls the wide-ranging narrative like a raconteur at a party, and develops a kaleidoscopic portrait of Catherine. This thoughtful exploration of familial trauma and love will have readers riveted

Violaine Huisman summons her late mother's voice in order to speak with and through and for her. The result is a charged portrait of a vibrant and destructive woman as imagined by the daughter who believed it was her job to save her. The prose has the unmistakable urgency and authority of love, producing an homage without idealization, an elegy without false consolation. The Book of Mother is at once an act of radical identification and a way of letting go

Hypnotic and searching

A powerful and emotive piece of autofiction... as raucous as it is melancholic... Huisman powerfully rebukes the idealised paradigm of motherhood that is so entrenched in our society

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. This is an exquisite evocation of the passionate, reciprocal love that can illuminate its objects, or destroy them, or both. No one who reads this captivating book will ever forget Maman.

Violaine Huisman unfurls memories, facts and family myths . . . it's poignant, terribly alive . . . the grit Huisman has in retelling her story, both as a young girl and as a writer, is as beautiful as it is brave . . . dignified and devastating, the book is a superb monument to a woman who spent her whole life in flight

A magnificent ode. Her prose abounds with literary force

A sparkling debut. Any sadness in the telling is countered by the panache and surprise of the writing infused in these pages. Love wins out in a life of struggle - the struggle of a monarch without a kingdom

Captures a filial love as fierce and frank as its central figure