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"Tyler's ability to dissect the parent-child relationship is unmatched."
The Night Garden: Of My Mother is an honest, beautifully written exploration of the intricate bonds between mothers and daughters.
Sandra Tyler, the acclaimed author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of The Year, mines what it means to be divided between these roles, with empathy and affectionate comedy.
When her 86-year-old mother falls and breaks her hip, Sandra Tyler is 42, with a nursing infant and precocious toddler.
After this fall, Tyler's mother insists on hiring her own caregivers-a motley patchwork of lost souls, including the too-friendly who think Scrabble is a good idea. But when she has a near-fatal fall, it is the author who hires a live-in aide, Chandice, who moves into her mother's house as if it were her own, with her KitchenAid mixer and apple-and-kale concoctions. Where should Tyler's allegiance lie? At what cost to their relationship should she no longer defer to her mother's steadfast guidance?
As her mother's dementia worsens, Chandice warns the author about other daughters "gone crazy" watching their mothers become unrecognizable. After her mother's death, the author is admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she sleeps the "sleep of the dying," as her mother slept in her final weeks. But in the timelessness of this ward, she can wonder: what exactly had always been at the core of their bond?
In breathtaking prose, The Night Garden candidly explores what it means for a daughter to have her focus fractured by conflicting responsibilities while still seeking, above all else, her mother's approval, protection and love.
