She recalls only the “quaking, liquefying dread” of being near her mother. In its compression and odd omissions, its reluctance to diagnose, this memoir is itself an erratic — an outlier in its genre. How moth-eaten “The Erratics” appears in comparison — and yet, how intriguing is its approach. She was a mother with a monstrous talent for twisting reality. In her memoir of the aftermath, her daughter tethers her story to the very ground beneath her.

Source: New York Times August 11, 2020 16:07 UTC