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The Erratics
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Jacqueline Samuda
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Women
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Publisher's Summary
Two sisters reckon with their toxic parents through the decline and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty in this award-winning “brilliantly-written memoir... [that] reads like a novel” (best-selling author Margaret Atwood via Twitter).
When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years their mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home.
Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother and encounter all the pressures that come with caring for elderly parents. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favorite phrase during their childhood was: "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it."
Set against the natural world of the Canadian foothills ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir — at once dark and hopeful — shatters precedents about grief, anger, and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humor.
Critic Reviews
"Somehow, despite the dark subject matter, this book has a smile at its core, and Laveau-Harvie shows constant wit when depicting some harrowing times. The narrative is brimming with honesty, the narrator somehow manages to see all viewpoints, and we are rewarded with an evocative and expansive view of a family that has more than its fair share of dysfunction." (Australia’s Stella Prize Judge’s Report)
"Piercing, honest and oddly hilarious." (Alex McClintock, The Globe and Mail)
"Atmospheric ... The result - the rare memoir unobsessed with memories - is sometimes infuriating but always enthralling." (The New Yorker)
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Melanie
- 10-11-20
This was a good, interesting listen
Was really engrossed in the story. Highly recommend. It kept my interest from start to finish.
