Up from the Blue
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Tillie is an eight-year-old girl who doesn't stop. She buzzes with an incessant creative energy, dreaming and dancing and always talking, talking, talking: and all for her beautiful mother Mara. But for Mara even the ordinary world is too much; suffocating under an unshakeable misery, all she longs for is life to leave her alone. When Tillie's father receives a promotion, he sees a new chance to impose order - and by the time Tillie arrives in their new house her mother is nowhere to be seen. Tillie's imagination feverishly tries to solve the mystery, but the truth is far more distressing than she ever could have thought. An achingly real depiction of a family struggling with mental illness, Up from the Blue is a wrenching debut recalling the works of Lionel Shriver, Mark Haddon, and Emma Donoghue.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this elegant debut, Tillie Harris, about to give birth to her first child, traces her mother's tragic descent into madness when Tillie was eight years old. A weird, rambunctious girl, Tillie admires her eccentric mother, Mara, but when Mara refuses to get out of bed for several days while their father is away, Tillie and her older brother, Phil, are left to fend for themselves. When their father, a stern, emotionally cold army colonel, returns to find the house in a state of chaos, he begins a daily ritual of dragging his wife from bed and setting her crying on the floor, where she remains for hours. The colonel then accepts a job at the Pentagon and moves the family cross-country. Tillie and Phil arrive at their new home, but their mother is missing, erased without explanation. Henderson's fascinating novel fearlessly examines the complexities of depression, romantic and filial love, and motherhood. Beautiful, funny, sad, and complicated, Tillie's quest to understand her complex, troubled family is filled with lush descriptions of painfully emotional moments.
