LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A gorgeous, critically acclaimed debut novel about a young woman coming of age with a dazzling yet damaged mother who lived and loved in extremes - in the bestselling tradition of Jeannette Walls''s The Glass Castle.
A prize-winning tour de force when it came out in France, Violaine Huisman''s remarkable debut novel is about a daughter''s inextinguishable love for her magnetic, mercurial mother. Beautiful and charismatic, Catherine, aka ''Maman'', smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard and loves too extravagantly. During a joyful and chaotic childhood in Paris, her daughter Violaine wouldn''t have it any other way.
But when Maman is hospitalised after a third divorce and breakdown, everything changes. Even as Violaine and her sister long for their mother''s return, once she''s back Maman''s violent mood swings and flagrant disregard for personal boundaries soon turn their home into an
