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Title details for Mother In the Dark by Kayla Maiuri - Available

Mother In the Dark

A Novel

by Kayla Maiuri
Holly Linneman
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
"Tender and unsparing, this is a novel to hold onto." —Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me
“A masterfully written novel, alive and lyrical, a hypnotic rendering of the mess and the tenderness of family life.”
—Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
 
A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters.
When Anna’s sister calls with an urgent message, Anna doesn’t return the call. She knows it’s about their mother.
Growing up in an Italian American family in working-class Boston, Anna lives a simple but comfortable childhood—filled with homemade meals and front-porch gatherings in a close-knit neighborhood. She and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the sun, trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature. When their father gets a new job outside the city, the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middle-class suburban existence. Anna's mother is suddenly adrift, and the darkness lurking inside her ignites. Her daughters, isolated and trapped with her in their new house, do everything they can to keep her from unraveling.
Alternating between Anna's childhood and her twenties, when she receives a shattering call about her mother that threatens to blow up her precariously constructed life in New York, Mother in the Dark asks whether we can ever return home when the idea of home is fraught with instability. This story about sisterhood, the complications of class, and the chains of inheritance between mothers and daughters delivers an unvarnished portrayal of the fragile horrors of domestic life and a young woman consumed by her past.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 9, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593584620
      • File size: 205527 KB
      • Duration: 07:08:10

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 1, 2022
      Maiuri’s wrenching and poignant debut centers on a family in escalating crisis due to a mother’s mental illness. Anna, 20-something, left her Massachusetts hometown for New York City, where she shares an apartment with her friend Vera. Now, Vera has fallen in love, and Anna is afraid she’ll move in with the boyfriend. Distressed, Anna ignores phone calls from her father, Vin, and her two younger sisters, Lia and Sofia, despite sensing the calls are because her mother, Dee, is not well. Most of the action is in flashbacks to Anna’s adolescence, when Vin, without consulting Dee, moves the family out of the Italian American suburb in Boston where Dee grew up. They are the first family to move into a new development, where Vin becomes more aloof and drinks too much, and Dee mentally shuts down. The sisters react in different ways, as Anna and Lia become close to Vera, who moves in across the street. Maiuri brings nuance to the heavy subject matter: inherited madness, fracturing family bonds, and resentment held in the body, balanced nicely with Anna’s strong narrative voice: “I hate that she’s so desperate for love,” she says of Vera. Fans of Justin Torres’s We the Animals will find a lot to like. Agent: Alice Whitwham, Elyse Cheney Literary.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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