FUGITIVE

A gorgeous, critically acclaimed debut novel about a young woman coming of age with a dazzling yet damaged mother who lived and loved in extremes - in the bestselling tradition of Jeannette Wallss The Glass Castle.

A prize-winning tour de force when it came out in France, Violaine Huismans remarkable debut novel is about a daughters inextinguishable love for her magnetic, mercurial mother. Beautiful and charismatic, Catherine, aka Maman, smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard and loves too extravagantly. During a joyful and chaotic childhood in Paris, her daughter Violaine wouldnt have it any other way.

But when Maman is hospitalised after a third divorce and breakdown, everything changes. Even as Violaine and her sister long for their mothers return, once shes back Mamans violent mood swings and flagrant disregard for personal boundaries soon turn their home into an emotional landmine. As the story of Catherines own traumatic childhood and coming of age unfolds, the pieces come together to form an indelible portrait of a mother as irresistible as she is impossible, as triumphant as she is transgressive.

With spectacular ferocity of language, a streak of dark humor and stunning emotional bravery, The Book of Mother