Synopses & Reviews
The seemingly inexplicable estrangement between a woman and her grown daughter opens up a troubling question: What damage do we do in the blindness of love?
Thousands of miles from home, a woman stands on a dark street, peeking through well-lit windows at two little girls. They are the grandchildren she’s never met, daughters of the daughter she has not seen in years.
At the center of this mesmerizing story is the woman’s quest to understand how a relationship that began in bliss—a mother besotted with her only child—arrived at a point of such unfathomable distance. Weaving back and forth in time, she unravels memories and long-buried feelings, retracing the infinite acts of parental care, each so mundane and apparently benign, that in ensemble may have undermined what she most treasured. With exquisite psychological precision, Blum traces the seemingly insignificant missteps and deceptions of family life, where it’s possible to cross the line between protectiveness and possession without even seeing it—and uncertain whether, or how, we can find our way back.
Review
“A stone-cold masterwork of psychological tension. Often its sentences are deceptively clear, as transparent and menacing as a swarm of jellyfish. Elsewhere, the tone swerves into humor, even goofiness. What links the two disparate registers, and all those in between, is an unerring authenticity: Every observation, gesture and piece of dialogue rings true. . . . its intrigues and revelations are dramatic enough to be wholly satisfying. Its final pages had me holding my breath.” —Flynn Berry, New York Times Book Review
“Mesmerising, disquieting … Blum is a virtuoso at stoking unease…. [An] unforgettable book.” —Guardian
“In a similar vein as Elena Ferrante's The Lost Daughter and Sheila Heti's Motherhood, this gut-punch of a novel … [is] for anyone who’s been a daughter, a mother or both.” —PureWow
About the Author
Hila Blum is the author of the Israeli bestsellers The Visit and How to Love Your Daughter, which won the Sapir Prize. She is also a book editor. She lives in Jerusalem, where she was born and raised.