My Mother Never Dies [Hardcover]

Claire Castillon (Author), Alison Anderson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2009

Nineteen stunning, disturbing short stories delve into the complex relationship between mothers and daughters.
In My Mother Never Dies, the literary provocateur Claire Castillon dissects the darkest aspects of the relationship between mothers and daughters. A woman tries so hard to be friends with her daughter that she begins to revert to her own adolescence; another woman finds her mother engaged in an illicit affair with a man they both know too well; a daughter rattles off all the reasons why she’s disgusted with her invalid mother but realizes through her haze of teenage hatred that she is losing the only person who tells her the truth.
Stunning, shocking, unflinching, and ultimately tender, My Mother Never Dies forces us to look at the worst and best of mothers and daughters. Like the work of Miranda July and A.M.Homes, Castillon won’t let us avert our gaze from the terrible and true any more than from the beautiful and true— because it all reveals the depth of our need for each other.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“One can’t help but submit to [its] poisonous charms.”—Le Figaro

 

“This singular talent really sings: rarely have we seen motherdaughter relationships with such cruelty, such bitterness, or such acuity.”—Lire

[My Mother Never Dies is] well-honed and distinguished by vivid, unflinching candor.Castillon''s stories depict the disasters wrought by the intensity of the mother-daughter bond, while still suggesting the possibility of a love that''s sublime in its fragility and imperfection.

(Kirkus )

Punchy, brief takes on complicated mother-daughter relationships dominate French novelist Castillon''s tantalizing English-language debut. Sharp, perceptive and edgy, these stories take the reader to some profoundly uncomfortable places.

(Publishers Weekly )

About the Author

CLAIRE CASTILLON is the author of five novels and two collections of short stories, many of which have been translated and published throughout the world. My Mother Never Dies is her English-language debut. She is thirty-three years old.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (February 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014264
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014262
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Miserable and Disturbing Stories, February 26, 2009

By 

*~ Sunshine ~* (Beautiful Iowa, the place to grow.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Mother Never Dies (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I must admit that I have to struggle to find anything positive to write about "My Mother Never Dies", but that may just be me. Throughout the book, I maintained hope that there would be something redeeming. It never happened. These snippets of the worst examples of mother/daughter relationships and humanity in general just kept coming, each either equally bad or worse than the last. I have to wonder why someone would choose this subject matter. Oh yes, shock value, and it does have plenty of that. I usually read for pleasure though, and entertainment, and I would not use either of these words to describe this book.

The author, Claire Castillon, does have her own, not totally unappealing style, though I found the sentences broken and difficult to follow at times, possibly due to translation to English. I would consider reading her work again if on other, more pleasant, subject matter.

If you are seeking an off-beat, shocking, book of short, easy-to-read stories, you may consider giving this a try. But be forewarned, it is not a "feel good" accounting of mother and daughter relationships. I came away with a sense of great gratitude that neither my mother, nor any women that I have known, vaguely resembled any of those in this book. Maybe that was her goal.

Edit: In fairness, the one star would be for this books subject matter. As a writer, I would give her three.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad mothers, February 13, 2009

By 

Orion (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: My Mother Never Dies (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Here we have every kind of bad mother cliche you can think of. There is the pill-popping mother, the mother who overlooks incest, the mother obsessed with appearances, the mother who refuses to act like an adult. There are a few messed up daughters as well. A lot of these stories are extreme cases of the conflicts every family experiences from time to time. Others are just strange.

I suppose there are people who will find all this melodrama fascinating. I wasn't really very interested in it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Antidote to the Smiling Mommy Stories, March 26, 2009

By 

Rachel Kramer Bussel "Cupcakes Take the Cake ... (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: My Mother Never Dies (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

These short, sharp stories are almost a sucker punch to the images of the glowing mom, or the yummy mummy, or the perfectly happy mother-daughter pairs, the ones who refer to themselves as best friends. Castillon captures women's ambivalence about parenthood, even hatred of it, as well as the complexity of being a daughter with tight prose that makes you both long for more to each story, and thrilled at the exquisiteness packed into each one. Chilling and snappy, and nothing like what you'll see in the tabloids.