In My Mother's House
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- £3.49
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- £3.49
Publisher Description
Lydia Franklin, daughter of a prosperous New York banker, grows up in a house filled with shadows and secrets. By the time she marries George Webster and moves to Connecticut, she is a dutiful wife obsessed with forgetting her past...controlling her daughter Charlotte's life...and vanquishing her personal demons. But Lydia's deeply buried yesterdays may taint her daughter's chance of happiness, and destroy her beautiful, artistic granddaughter Molly with the legacy of a truth too shocking to ever tell.
A riveting novel of mother and daughters torn apart by loss and twisted emotions, In My Mother's House sweeps from the brownstones of turn-of-the-century New York to the stately farmlands of Connecticut to explore a woman's shame, a family's deceit, and a final act of love...
PRAISE FOR IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE
“Accomplished… the portrait of Lydia is one of the novel’s triumphs.” - New York Times Book Review
“A classic woman’s novel…Compassionate…absorbing.” - Newsday
“An utterly absorbing… resounding novel… Skillful and precise psychological threadwork…Crystalline images and genuine warmth for her characters…Winthrop powerfully illuminates one of the darker corners of the human psyche.” - Publishers Weekly
“Explores the fearful legacy of child abuse in the lives of three women… the author writes with the ease and narrative punch of a practiced storyteller.” - Kirkus Reviews
“Written with sensitivity and insight.” - Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her large, resounding first novel spanning three generations, former journalist Winthrop powerfully illuminates one of the darker corners of the human psyche. Part one chronicles young Lydia Franklin's fearful confusion when a treasured uncle begins to exploit her sexually. He stops only after a fire sweeps through the family brownstone, changing the course of Lydia's life irrevocably as she sinks into the first of several breakdowns. At the urging of a Freudian analyst, she records her painful experiences in journals that are then hidden away. Resettled on a Connecticut farm after her marriage, Lydia sublimates her fears and nervous energy by embracing a series of political causes and a struggle for family perfection. Daughter Charlotte is driven away by her mother's overwhelming need for control. But when Charlotte's similar single-mindedness alienates her own daughter Molly, Lydia's deep-seated fears about sexual abuse surface again. Only after reading the dusty journals does Molly free herself from the crushing, complex weight that love, guilt and family secrets have exerted through the generations. The three separate parts of this novel do not easily coexist, and the latter two are simply outweighed by the dark power of Lydia's early life. Despite these flaws, Winthrop's psychological threadwork is skillful and precise, and her crystalline images and genuine warmth for her characters make this an utterly absorbing book.
