Nightshade Mother [Paperback]

A striking memoir that travels through a traumatic childhood with an abusive mother.

In this extraordinary memoir, Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales, recounts her toxic upbringing at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother. It is a book that Gwyneth has been preparing to write all her life, in diaries that shes kept since childhood. In these journals, she interrogates the emotionally abusive mother/daughter relationship, in great pain but with determination to find a way through.

The result is a book that Gwyneth co-writes with her younger self, an unexpected and life-saving dialogue through time. Metaphors of haunting intensity help her confront what happened to her; quotations from art and literature help to guide and steady her.Nightshade Motheris a book about the power of art and language and, ultimately, about homecoming after a lifetime of exile from herself. It is a profoundly moving and beautiful work; questing, forgiving, and loving in its approach.

Gwyneth Lewiswas appointed Waless first National Poet in 2005 and composed the six-foot-high inscription on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her books includeChaotic Angels, Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression,andTwo in a Boat: A Marital Voyage.

Lewis's persistence in naming, taming and understanding her mother's worst features makesNightshade Motheran original and valuable exploration of a tragically mismatched mother and daughter.

This compelling memoir, daring to voice its own truth, proves it can be done.

This is an astonishils>