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by Robin Wasserman
From the author of Girls on Fire comes a psychologically riveting novel centered around a woman with no memory, the scientists invested in studying her, and the daughter who longs to understand.
Who is Wendy Doe? The woman, found on a Peter Pan Bus to Philadelphia, has no money, no ID, and no memory of who she is, where she was going, or what she might have done. She's assigned a name and diagnosis by the state: Dissociative fugue, a temporary amnesia that could lift at any moment—or never at all. When Dr. Benjamin Strauss invites her to submit herself for experimental observation at his Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research, she feels like she has no other choice.
To Dr. Strauss, Wendy is a female body, subject to his investigation and control. To Strauss's ambitious student, Lizzie Epstein, she's an object of fascination, a mirror of Lizzie's own desires, and an invitation to wonder: once a woman is untethered from all past and present obligations of womanhood, who is she allowed to become?
To Alice, the daughter she left behind, Wendy Doe is an absence so present it threatens to tear Alice's world apart. Through their attempts to untangle the mystery of Wendy's identity—as well as Wendy's own struggle to construct a new self—Wasserman has crafted a jaw-dropping, multi-voiced journey of discovery, reckoning, and reclamation.
Searing, propulsive, and compassionate, Mother Daughter Widow Wife is an ambitious exploration of selfhood from an expert and enthralling storyteller.
"In addition to meditating on personhood and recollection, Wasserman deftly explores power dynamics, ambition, and the lingering scars of trauma. A beautifully written exploration of identity, memory, power, and agency." - Kirkus Reviews
"[S]hrewd...This examination of how one man in power can abuse the women closest to him delivers the goods." - Publishers Weekly
"Wasserman asks big questions about how well we can really know another person, the nature of truth as it relates to memory, and what this all means for how we perceive ourselves...[the novel] ultimately has some great twists and all those questions Wasserman raises make it an excellent book discussion choice." - Booklist
"[F]or readers of stylish psychological thrillers who can be forgiven for skimming." - Library Journal
"Mother Daughter Widow Wife is suspenseful, keenly intelligent, and thoroughly engrossing. Robin Wasserman's novel explores the complexities of memory and identity with unflinching clarity and deep compassion." - Tom Perrotta, author of Mrs. Fletcher
"Mother Daughter Widow Wife is an utterly enthralling piece of music, sharp and soulful and ferociously insightful all at once, uncompromising in its willingness to look at the dark pulse lurking inside every love. This singular, spellbinding novel is not only an investigation of how female intimacy plays out across landscapes shaped by male power and desire, but an exploration of identity itself—the complicated alchemies of narrative, memory, desire, enthrallment and betrayal that compose us all." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Robin Wasserman's Mother Daughter Widow Wife is an elegant postulate on the myriad ways we abandon ourselves. Whether disassociating from our bodies during sex, betraying who we believe ourselves to be in a quest to achieve more or losing an entire lifetime of memories, Wasserman's deft narrative braids her characters' disparate attempts at escape into a single, moving pluralism: we spend our lives constructing elaborate 'selves' only to find that the palaces we've built may also be our prisons. Wasserman has a unique gift for describing the turbulent intersection of love and need, hinting that the freedom we seek may only be the freedom to change." - Liz Phair, author of Horror Stories
"Mother Daughter Widow Wife is more than a compelling novel; it's a psychological engagement with the pressing question of what it means to occupy a woman's body in 21st century North America. Wasserman has given us the whole package: a book that makes you both think and feel, with a story driven by the radically mysterious movements of the human heart." - Lydia Peelle, author of The Midnight Cool
This information about Mother Daughter Widow Wife was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Robin Wasserman is the author of Girls on Fire, an NPR and BuzzFeed Best Book of the Year. She is a graduate of Harvard College with a Master's in the history of science. She lives in Los Angeles, where she writes for television.
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