Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist NICOLE GRAEV LIPSON breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives.

What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.

“This magnificent debut places Nicole Graev Lipson squarely among the greatest memoirists and thinkers of our day.”—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year