Based in part on the author's mother's handwritten memoirs, this novel
is an act of bricolage in which the narrator keeps finding gaps in the
materials. We desire to regain the past, but every time we attempt it we
fabricate it anew. Through various narrative voices, the author
discovers a different sense of her mother than she held during her
lifetime. This is a type of biographical revisionism. We cannot know the
past, especially that of our mothers, but we can re-member them.
Meticulously researched, this book constitutes an extended meditation on
memory, the strength of memory and its fallibility.