In the Country of Absence
Publisher
:
Albin Michel
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782226218667
Number of pages
:
168
Description
The celebrated author of One Day My Sister Disappeared, published by Random House in 2004, tells a story that in some way speaks to each of us: about the loss of a mother. Not to death, but to Alzheimer’s disease.
The narrator’s mother arrives in Paris for the Christmas holidays. But there is nothing to celebrate. This is not the mother she knows—something is very wrong. Once vital and clear-minded, her mother is now confused; she asks the same questions over and over, and, perhaps most disconcerting, she keeps on her lap a stuffed animal, a monkey, that she thinks is a real dog she rescued from the street.
Providing physical care—washing, dressing, and feeding her mother—is difficult and distressing but clear cut. What is not at all clear is how to combat the urge to tell her mother “the truth.” Should she do as her mother says and call the vet about the stuffed animal, or try to convince her mother that it is not real? The daughter can, with effort, learn to deal with her mother in the privacy of the apartment, but what about in public? Can she take her mother anywhere, when in a shopping center she stops in front of the escalator and starts to scream? What are the rules? What is right? Who is this woman with the face of the mother who took care of her? She wonders at times if her love is strong enough to let her give her mother the care she needs and guiltily looks forward to putting her on the plane home.
In the Country of Absence describes the process of a daughter learning to conquer the anger, fear, and loss she feels at her mother’s disappearance as a parental figure, at the change in dependence, at the near total eclipse of both women’s rationality in response to a destructive and terrifying disease.
Author
Christine Orban : Christine Orban grew up in Casablanca and is now a journalist as well as the author of a number of previous novels, including N’oublie pas d’être heureuse (Albin Michel 2009) and La mélancholie du Dimanche (Albin Michel, 2004). A memoir, One Day My Sister Disappeared, was published in English by Random House in 2004 and in Random House trade paperback in 2005.
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