The Night Garden

Of My Mother

By: Sandra Tyler

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Hardcover | 23 October 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover
288 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97 x 2.06

Hardcover

$65.25

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When her 86-year-old mother falls and breaks her hip, Sandra Tyler is 42, with a nursing infant and precocious toddler. Tyler's mother insists on hiring her own caregivers-a motley patchwork of lost souls, including the too-friendly who think Scrabble is a good idea. But when she has a near-fatal fall, it is the author who hires a live-in aide, Chandice, who moves into her mother's house as if it were her own, with her KitchenAid mixer, bake pans, and apple-and-kale concoctions. Where should Tyler's allegiance lie when her mother threatens to fire Chandice for overloading the washing machine? At what cost to their relationship should she no longer defer to her mother's staunch guidance?

As her mother's dementia worsens, Chandice warns the author about other daughters "gone crazy" watching their mothers become unrecognizable-after her mother's death, the author is admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she sleeps the "sleep of the dying," as her mother slept in her final weeks. But in the timelessness of this ward, she can wonder: was her closeness with her mother not of best friends, but something inherent in their dispositions as a writer and artist-in that compulsion to be seen and heard? With empathy and affectionate comedy, The Night Garden candidly explores what it means for a daughter to have her focus fractured by conflicting responsibilities while still seeking, above all else, her mother's approval, protection and love

Industry Reviews

"THE NIGHT GARDEN IS HONEST IN A HARD-WON, bracing way. Readers will value it for that. Ours remains a society of denial and here is an unrelenting portrait of love and loss, step by step, humbling detail by detail, in a prose that has transcended self-pity and pain and won its lived perspective."

DeWitt Henry, Founder of Ploughshares

Author of The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts and Trim Reckonings

"??????A RICH AND POIGNANT ACCOUNT of a daughter's complex relationship with her aging mother and the emotional toll of illness, loss, and love."

Maryanne O'Hara

Author of LITTLE MATCHES: A MEMOIR OF FINDING LIGHT IN THE DARK

?????Praise for BLUE GLASS

"LOVELY AND UNUSUAL...Of all the novel's virtues, this is perhaps the rarest: an evenhanded understanding that illuminates both the particularity of the relationship and the universality of mother-and-daughter conflicts."

Jane Smiley

The New York Times Book Review

"????AN UNPRETENTIOUS BUT ACCOMPLISHED NOVEL about the bittersweet relationship between a mother and a daughter... one of those quietly compelling stories that touches the heart."

Kirkus Reviews

"??THIS STRONG, THOUGHTFUL NOVEL about a young girl and her changing relationship with her parents develops with quiet momentum beneath its cool, unadorned surface."

Publisher's Weekly

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