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Motherest: A Novel Hardcover – August 1, 2017

by Kristen Iskandrian (Author)

4.4 73 ratings

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Marrying the sharp insights of Jenny Offill with the dark humor of Maria Semple, Motherest is an inventive and moving coming-of-age novel that captures the pain of fractured family life, the heat of new love, and the particular magic of the female friendship -- all through the lens of a fraying daughter-mother bond.

It's the early 1990s, and Agnes is running out of people she can count on. A new college student, she is caught between the broken home she leaves behind and the wilderness of campus life. What she needs most is her mother, who has seemingly disappeared, and her brother, who left the family tragically a few years prior.

As Agnes falls into new romance, mines female friendships for intimacy, and struggles to find her footing, she writes letters to her mother, both to conjure a closeness they never had and to try to translate her experiences to herself. When she finds out she is pregnant, Agnes begins to contend with what it means to be a mother and, in some ways, what it means to be your own mother.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...[A] touching, delightful, and satisfying novel about motherhood."―Publishers Weekly (Best Books of 2017)

"MOTHEREST is a moving story of loss and loneliness and parenthood and love, in all their vast human multitudes. It's an intensely perceptive and honest novel about the sometimes-unbridgeable gap between parents and children. Kristen Iskandrian's narrator is an extraordinary character: a woman searching desperately for connection, an island trying to become a peninsula. You will want to yell at her, as I did, and you will want to cry with her, as I did, and you will be transfixed until the very last page."―Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix

"One of the most unforgettable protagonists I've read in recent years - as if a Dickens heroine was reimagined by a literary girl gang made up of Deb Olin Unferth, Katherine Dunn and Lydia Davis."―Porochista Khakpour, author of The Last Illusion

"Kristen Iskandrian is an utterly thrilling voice, and MOTHEREST will slay you with its inventive, spiky, and heartrending investigation into the dark mysteries of family life - and the quest for a private identity within it. A smart, gorgeous, and singular debut."―Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me

"This is a book of wombs, physical and metaphorical, an exploration into the ways we make spaces to become ourselves - both divine and misguided - and what it means to be a daughter. Kristen Iskandrian's prose is both compulsively readable and structurally unique, investigating the mysteries of human feeling through a beautiful epistolary form."―Melissa Broder, author of So Sad Today

"I highly enjoyed MOTHEREST -- a powerful, moving, complex, wry, sensitive novel about crying, laughing, waiting, leaving, pain, loss, endurance, secrets, surprises, ambivalence, possession, parents, pregnancy, childbirth, college, home, and love."―Tao Lin, author of Taipei

"Kristen Iskandrian has done more than write a book: she's created a world. So particular and familiar is its setting (the '90s; college), so nuanced is its narrator (broken, whip-smart, wildly perceptive and yet frozen in her own fate), and so poignant is its writing (there are poems in these paragraphs!), you'll find yourself lingering in this world long after you've turned the last page. MOTHERESTis a fresh and devastating deep dive into womanhood, motherhood, teenagehood, and grief, and is an important reminder of the aches and wonders of being alive."―Molly Prentiss, author of Tuesday Nights in 1980

"Taut and tender, MOTHEREST one-ups the messy teenage page-turner, finding real human truths in its story of a vanished mother and a struggling daughter, a source for the sourceless longing of growing up."―Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

"[A] stellar first novel...sharp and honest...Agnes's voice charms with a subtle undercurrent of humor and sarcasm making this a delightful and satisfying reading experience. Iskandrian is a writer to watch."―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"MOTHEREST transforms from a smart...broody meditation on abandonment into an emotionally brimming story of new life and new responsibility. It becomes saturated with hope."―The Wall Street Journal

"[MOTHEREST forms] a tableau that is heartbreaking, hilarious, and poignant -- often at the same time. A powerfully perceptive story written with love, realism, and humor and that feels fresh despite the familiar terrain."―Kirkus (Starred Review)

"Agnes' voice, in her heartrending letters and her funny, sad, dead-true perceptions, propels Iskandrian's brilliant debut about life's continuously shifting, perplexing intimacies."―p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px 'Times New Roman'; color: #212121; -webkit-text-stroke: #212121}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}Booklist

About the Author

Kristen Iskandrian's work has been published or is forthcoming in Tin House, Zyzzyva, Crazyhorse, EPOCH, and Plougshares, among others. Her story "The Inheritors" was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 as a Juror Favorite. She was a juror for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 along with Tessa Hadley and Michael Parker. Born in Philadelphia, Kristen currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband and two daughters.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Twelve; First Edition (August 1, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 145559444X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1455594443
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,490,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19,410 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #29,297 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #97,365 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 73 ratings

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British5

Excellent: Both Intimate and Wide-Reaching. More of this writer, please....!

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2017

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This novel is a treasure. Deeply intimate and insightful, it explores the inner life of a young woman in such a thoughtful, emotional way that the reader feels she/he is embroiled in her world and her emotional experiences. Agnes is a remarkably aware character, one who is funny and dark, intelligent and uncertain, and most of all authentic. The intimacy with which I experienced this character was truly astonishing: it is rare to be able to connect with a character--to feel as if there is a genuine person--as well as I felt my connection to be with this character. This ability is truly a testament to a talented writer who is not only able to draw in the reader immediately but is also able to keep the reader interested in--even fascinated with--the character throughout the book. I felt consistently sympathetic with her, as if she could become part of my own life.
The plot is carefully drawn out so that Agnes' growth during the course of the book is identifiable throughout, so that the ending becomes realistic and consistent with the changes she experiences. The epistolary approach is lovely--just enough to reveal Agnes' thoughts and convey her anger, both with subtlety and humor. I read this in less than two days; each time I put it down, I felt compelled to enter Agnes' world again until the end. The fact that this novel tackles universal issues--relationships of various kinds, love, separation, and parenting, to name a few--is further testament to the fact that it works on multiple levels. It's a true master of writing who, like Ms. Iskandrian, can create a world both highly personal and universal in its thematic scope.
The most difficult thing about this book is that, like all things, it ends.
More, more, more from this exceptional and talented writer!
Very highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Tougher to get through

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2018

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If I let this book marinate in my mind a bit, I think I'll find that it gives me some new perspectives on issues I don't know much about. I think I've known people who've walked the road of this book's protagonist, and I couldn't understand why they did what they did. Maybe this book have me a window into what happens in a really dysfunctional family and why that sometimes makes people do things that I don't think make sense.

Still, that made this book more difficult for me to read than others where I connect to the characters more easily. I found the characters exasperating and infrequently sympathetic. That doesn't make the book bad, it just took a little more effort to work through.

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2018

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Read Motherest in a fit at the beach today. I loved it. It was one of the most emotionally rewarding novels I've read in years. Its so perfectly unsentimental and joyously symmetrical. Recommended for fans of coming of age stories and for fans of get-me-awwwwwway-from-myself stories.
A family drama and a collegiate adventure that builds up into something epic in scope and contains the wicked and holy juice of life by the ultimate end. A startling book, devoid of high fructose corn syrup and diabolical with its scope. Such a deep book, like climb in your submarine and go down into the chasms beneath the sea and go so far down you come up out of the sea on the other side of the world, but also, that chasm is just your dead brother's bedroom.
Technically I started reading this on Mother's Day and would have been able to read it all months ago but most of my reading is at an oil refinery and it would have destroyed that pink hardcover.

What a satisfying piece of art. Takes the stuff of death and gives it new strong lungs to sing a wild song.

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2017

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This novel felt so new, but also wonderfully old fashioned. Dragged me kicking and screaming back into the muddled desires of my 19 year old brain and body. Set in the 90's, the author does such a great job of evoking those final quiet years before we all got swallowed by the all-seeing eye of the internet. Neatly captures the weird liminal moment of late adolescence/early adulthood, and underlines the hazards of independence, while getting at some fundamental and uncomfortable truths about motherhood. In a modest, understated way, and in the simplest language, the BIG questions get wrestled with here, and you hardly know it's happening because the narrator keeps things moving, and makes you laugh. One of the better books about loneliness I've read (take that, Franzen). Prickly, funny, sad and smart.

6 people found this helpful

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