Description
Book SynopsisFROM THE AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE - A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD
''The Butterfly Lampshade is an unflinching, empathetic portrayal of a childhood touched by mental illness. As always, Aimee Bender''s respect for the child and the child within translates into wisdom and magic on the page.'' Jing-Jing Lee, author of How We Disappeared
On the night her mother is taken to a mental health hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is mesmerised by a lamp adorned with butterflies as she falls asleep. When she wakes, Francie sees a dead butterfly matching the ones on the lamp floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before anyone sees. Twenty-years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment and two other incidents that have haunted her life. But how clos
Trade Review
a beautifully written portrayal of a girl trying to understand her mother's mental illness. * Sunday Express *
[A] compact surrealist memory box of a novel. . . Its particular quality of stillness hums with so much mystery and intensity that the book never feels static . . . I felt considerably more altered by the experience than I often am by novels that travel much further from their beginnings . . . One finishes the novel with the eerie sense that we too are objects who have slipped accidentally into being. * New York Times *
[A] dazzling rumination on time and mental illness ... Bender has a gift for rooting wonderfully inventive fables in a very recognisable walkable world [and the] middle-class Los Angeles of backyards and hatchbacks, bus stops and craft shops, is overlaid with mythic events-modest miracles, observed by few, that expose a world of mystery. . . [Francie's] receptiveness to the marvels eddying around brightens every detail in a small, deeply felt life. * Oprah Magazine *
[A] poignant novel of love and mental illness. * USA Today *
