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Title :

Mother daughter widow wife : a novel / Robin Wasserman.

Title:

Mother daughter widow wife :

Author:

Wasserman, Robin

Format:

Books

Physical Description:

326 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

ISBN:

9781982139490

Production / Publication Information:

Summary:

Left with no memory of who she is, Wendy Doe arrives at the Meadowlark Institute of Memory Research, where she falls under the control of a doctor and his ambitious student, while the daughter she left behind tries to make sense of it all.

Language:

English

Subject Term:

Amnesia -- Fiction.

Abuse -- Fiction.

Abused women -- Fiction.

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Material Type	Library	Call Number	Item Barcode	Location
Book	Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library	F WASSERMAN	31478010145036	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Amesbury Public Library	FIC WASSERMAN	32114002594878	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Billerica Public Library	FICTION/WASSERMAN	33934004328093	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Boxford Town Library Storage	FIC WASSERMAN	32115002103719	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Chelmsford Public Library	FIC/WASSERMAN	31480011379564	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Dunstable Free Public Library	WAS	32118001022468	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Groveland - Langley-Adams Library	FIC WASSERMAN	32121000842696	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library	FIC WASSERMAN	30470001836609	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Haverhill Public Library	FIC/WASSERMAN R	31479007393662	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Lawrence Public Library	FIC WAS	31549004752159	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Merrimac Public Library	F WAS	32125001311072	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Middleton - Flint Public Library	F WASSERMAN	32126001739601	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Newbury Town Library	WAS	32127001251415	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Newburyport Public Library	FIC WASSERMAN R	32128003875094	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Rockport Public Library	FIC WASSERMAN	32129002410701	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Topsfield Town Library	FIC WASSERMAN	32133002514934	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Wilmington Memorial Library	FICTION WASSERMAN, ROBIN	32136003542770	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"[An] utterly enthralling piece of music, sharp and soulful and ferociously insightful all at once...This singular, spellbinding novel is...an exploration of identity itself." --Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and Make It Scream, Make It Burn

"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

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.

*Finalist for the 2021 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction*

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.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Wasserman's shrewd, beguiling follow-up to Girls on Fire unpacks the ways three women's lives are affected by a sexual predator. In 1999, a woman arrives in Philadelphia on a bus with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Dubbed Wendy Doe, she is placed into care at the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research. Lizzie Epstein, the research fellow tasked with observing her by Dr. Benjamin Strauss, a semi-famous scientist and philanderer, spends her days conversing with Wendy and mulling over the implicit bargain of her affair with Benjamin, who promises to advance her career. The story flashes forward two decades, when Lizzie, mourning the death of Benjamin, who she'd married after he left his first wife, opens her door to Alice, the 18-year-old daughter of Wendy. Alice is looking for information about her mother, who has disappeared. Wasserman's prose starkly conveys the power sought and held by Benjamin ("Strauss believed in knowledge by colonization, understanding a subject by spreading across every inch of its territory until it was wholly possessed"), and she methodically moves the story toward a disturbing revelation about the connections among Wendy, Lizzie, and Alice. This examination of how one man in power can abuse the women closest to him delivers the goods. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore and Company. (July)

Kirkus Review

A missing woman's past upends the lives of the women around her. In Wasserman's new novel, the author of Girls on Fire (2016) explores the lives of three women after one of them goes missing. Despite everyone telling her to move on, college student Alice is searching for her mother, who's disappeared. When she discovers her mother has gone missing before, she sets out to find her and the truth--which brings her to the door of Elizabeth Strauss. While working as a fellow at the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research, Strauss, who at that time was going by the nickname Lizzie, was invited to join a once-in-a-lifetime project by "psychology's latest golden god," Dr. Benjamin Strauss (then her boss, now her recently deceased husband). The project? Studying Alice's mother, aka Wendy Doe, a woman found on a bus without identification or memories, who's in a dissociative fugue state. Wendy's perspective is also offered through lyrical diary entries in which she explores who she is, who she's not, and what's happening to her in the moment (which is all she has). Told in alternating perspectives by Alice, Elizabeth, and Lizzie, the novel is like a knot being slowly unraveled. While a bit disorienting at first, Wasserman's choice to differentiate between Lizzie's point of view (the past) and Elizabeth's (the present) succeeds narratively and thematically. By offering one woman's insights at different points in time, the novel explores the ways time, memory, and hindsight inform who we are and who we become. After completing an exercise where she lists every memory she's had in the last two weeks, Lizzie realizes: "Almost everything that happens is forgotten. Decades swallowed. Maybe...the mystery isn't why we forget some things and not others. Maybe the mystery is why we ever remember." 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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Eighteen-year-old Alice's mother, Karen, has disappeared and it isn't the first time. Before Alice was born, Karen spent a period of time at the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research as Wendy Doe, studied for her complete loss of memory, under the observation of Dr. Benjamin Strauss and his protégé, grad student Lizzie. After Karen's second disappearance, Alice finds Lizzie, now known as Elizabeth, to see if she can provide any insight. Told in alternating chapters by Lizzie, Elizabeth, Alice, and Wendy, the novel weaves together the women's commonalities, which often revolve around their relationships with men and what they give up of themselves within those relationships. Wasserman (Girls on Fire, 2016) 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. While the novel takes a while to get moving, it ultimately has some great twists and all those questions Wasserman raises make it an excellent book-discussion choice.

Library Journal Review

The memory clinic has named her Wendy Doe, this total amnesiac with no known past. The clinic's "guest," she is being studied by eminent psychologist Benjamin Strauss and protégée Lizzie (soon, not surprisingly, to be his mistress). Some months later, Wendy's memory returns; she is Karen Clark, with a home and a husband. Some years later, Lizzie (now Elizabeth and Strauss's widow and a best-selling author) finds Alice at her front door. Alice's mother, Karen Clark, has disappeared, and Alice is seeking insight because Lizzie was close to Karen when she was still Wendy. Wendy, Lizzie, and Elizabeth narrate in turns. If it sounds a little soap opera-ish, it is, something the book lightly acknowledges, but the framework is sound. However, the narrative is interrupted frequently by side trips into scientific/psychological disquisition, Lizzie's ruminations on "mistress-hood," narrative theory, even soap-opera structure, and more. In the end, one unforeseen mystery is solved--Alice's paternity--but a larger one is not: What has become of Wendy/Karen this time? VERDICT For readers of stylish psychological thrillers who can be forgiven for skimming. [See Prepub Alert, 12/9/19.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Excerpts

1. Wendy WENDY This body This body is white. This body is female. This body bears no recent signs of penetration. This body has never given birth, but may or may not have incubated a fetus. This body offers no means of identification. This body bears the following distinguishing marks: Crescent scar behind left ear. Surgical scar along left calf. Mole on right breast, lower quadrant. No tattoos. Medical history: Healed fracture in each wrist. Three silver fillings. Mild scoliosis. O-positive blood. Cholesterol, average. Blood pressure, average. Nearsighted, mildly. Emergency room intake records indicate severe dehydration. Bruising to shoulders and back consistent with a fall or a struggle. No physical indication of recent head injury. No evident physiological cause of amnesic state. CAT scan: inconclusive. MRI: inconclusive. Rape kit: inconclusive. This body is uncoordinated. Its breasts have ghost nipples, pale and undersensitized. Its clitoris is small, but demanding. Its sinuses often hurt. Its eyes sting in the sun. It wants to sleep on its side, wrapped tight around something solid and warm. Its fingers are uncalloused; they do not work for their living. Its nails are ragged, its cuticles bloody. Its teeth are cared for, nutrition maintained. This body is not a temple, but it has been loved. You'd think someone would be looking for it. Excerpted from Mother Daughter Widow Wife: A Novel by Robin Wasserman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.