MotherKind

Jayne Anne Phillips' brilliant new novel explores the spiritual education at the heart of that fundamental transition- the child becoming the caretaker of the parent. In MOTHERKIND, Kate - whose care for her terminally ill mother coincides with the birth of her first child in the early months of a young marriage - must, in a single year, come to terms with radiant beginnings and profound loss. Phillips tells Kate's story in a delicately layered narrative in which the daily details of...
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Jayne Anne Phillips' brilliant new novel explores the spiritual education at the heart of that fundamental transition- the child becoming the caretaker of the parent. In MOTHERKIND, Kate - whose care for her terminally ill mother coincides with the birth of her first child in the early months of a young marriage - must, in a single year, come to terms with radiant beginnings and profound loss. Phillips tells Kate's story in a delicately layered narrative in which the daily details of life resonate with import and meaning.

We enter the world of Kate's marriage, of babies and stepchildren, neighbours and friends. We watch as the tumult of Kate's everyday world is enveloped by the gradual vanishing of her mother. And as the woman who has been her best friend and mentor disappears, we see Kate deal with timeless, perhaps unanswerable, questions of love and death.

It is the triumph of MOTHERKIND that Kate's complex experience being - and losing - a mother is so luminously portrayed.