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MotherKind
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PRAISE FOR
Jayne Anne Phillips's
MotherKind
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A
meticulous writer, Phillips has produced only four books to date, including
the novels Machine Dreams and Shelter, in which she explored the
paradoxes of existence from the points of viewof youthful characters. This deeply
felt, profoundly affecting novel, her best so far, exhibits a maturity of vision
both keen and wistful. . . . The narrative captures the quotidian rhythms of
domesticity, the stresses of childraising and of nursing the sick, creating
a focused yet universal world. . . . Phillips explores the intuitive bond between
mothers and daughters with unforced grace.All the characters are articulate
and introspective; they ponder the human condition, yet function in the daily
sphere, with dialogue so easy and true it seems inevitable. . . .Amid the inexorable
approach of death, the messy certitude and fecund abundance of human life resonate
throughout this compassionate and spiritually nourishing novel. |
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Although we know from its first page that the protagonist's
mother is dying of cancer, Jayne Anne Phillips's rich, involving novel is
not a story of loss but of connection. . . .Though her
third novel may contain all the emotional ingredients of a made-for-television
movie, Phillips avoids tear-jerking through the use of precisely observed
details . . . and the absence of cliché. She has even side-stepped, at the
end, the requisite death-bed scene, knowing that there is almost no way left
to write about such moments without recourse to received language and images.
A book for mothers and daughters--and especially for stepmothers--MotherKind
uncovers the mixed sources of maternal strength in love, habit, and necessity.
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. . . in the hands of a writer as gifted as Jayne Anne Phillips,
even the most commonplace care, such as when Kate changes the baby's diaper,
becomes lyrical. . . [a] beautiful and moving work of fiction that celebrates
the profundity of ordinary life.
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"MotherKind"
is a book about loss by a writer famous for her protected loneliness. It is
a stunning meditation on family by a woman who pioneered a shocking rootlessness.
It is a lesson in writing by an author who is known to spend days patiently
beading together words, knotting them into place, securing the clasp. |
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. . Phillips' luminous new novel, MotherKind (Knopf), which is, in many
ways, an exploration of the incongruities, the paradoxes, the mystifying jigsaw
pieces that make our existence on this planet unquenchably compelling. If also
heartbreaking. |
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.
. .this is a beautifully written book. Phillips' poetic sensibilities are everywhere
evident in her elegant prose and in the graceful ebb and flow of her sentences. |
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— Nancy Goldstone, Miami Herald
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©2000 J.A.Phillips - text & images
unless otherwise noted
©2000 Nimworks Design - web site design
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