Description
Book SynopsisWhen Phil Jourdan's mother died suddenly in 2009, she left behind a legacy of kindness and charity - but she also left unanswered some troubling questions. Was she, as she once claimed, a spy? Had she suffered more profoundly as a woman and parent than she'd let on? Jourdan's recollections of his struggles with psychosis, and his reconstructions of conversations with his enigmatic mother, form the core of this memoir. Psychoanalysis, poetry and confession all merge to tell the story of an ordinary woman whose death turned her into a symbol for extraordinary motherhood.
Trade ReviewThis is a beautiful meditation, simultaneously subtle and powerfully direct, on the depth of emotion between a mother and son. Jourdans words come back to me long after Ive finished the book. Moments of this memoir leave me haunted, and in that way renew my devotion to fragile lives, which is to say all of us, all so human, and to life as wild and fleeting. (Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl) Praise for Motherhood is a brutally honest, touching, and gut-wrenching story about love, loss, family and, possibly, forgiveness. (Richard Thomas, author of Transubstantiate)
