Madwoman
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3.8 • 17 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A National Bestseller • Finalist for the WILLA Literary Award• Longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize • An Oprah’s Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of 2024
“[Bieker’s] writing is raw, breathlessly confessional, brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence, the constant tension carried by survivors.” – The New York Times Book Review
“This book made me laugh and cry. It reads like a thriller and a love song. It’s about being crushed and rising strong.” - Cheryl Strayed
“The rare kind of book that lives in your bones” (Ashley Audrain), this novel tells a gripping story of motherhood and motherloss and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, marking Chelsea Bieker as a major fiction talent.
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.
But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A would-be perfect mother’s life unravels in this nail-biting thriller. “Clove” works hard to keep her family happy, healthy, and insulated from her unsavoury past. When her mother contacts Clove from prison, her letter brings up bad memories and threatens to unearth everything Clove thought she’d escaped. Author Chelsea Bieker strikes a nerve with this taut psychological thriller, illuminating the dark corners of domestic abuse as well as the challenges and power of motherhood. We especially enjoyed Bieker’s punchy prose and rich characterization as she takes us through Clove’s daily routines and inner circle—even as everything disintegrates around her. Each new page winds the spring tighter and tighter until her carefully crafted happy life threatens to crumble in a climax that will leave you breathless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The uneven latest from Bieker (Godshot) blends psychological thriller tropes with a meditation on motherhood. On the surface, protagonist Clove leads a picture-perfect life: she's a mother of two, her husband works in finance, and she's often seen pushing her double stroller around their tony neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Clove's parents died in a car accident when she was 17, or so she's told her trusting husband. The truth, she admits to the reader, is that their life is built on a "foundation of lies" she told him on their first date. But when a letter from Clove's mother arrives from the California women's prison where she's serving time for the murder of Clove's father, Clove's flawless life threatens to unravel. Scenes from the present day alternate with chapters from Clove's childhood in Waikiki, Hawaii, where her father would often beat her mother, sometimes to the point that she coughed up blood. Bieker builds suspense by parsing out key bits of information, though some of the twists strain credulity and veer into melodrama. She's better with the character work, especially in her exploration of how Clove's childhood trauma causes her to worry she'll be deemed unfit for parenthood. It's a mixed bag.
Customer Reviews
Madwoman
So good