Stammered Songbook

By Erwin Mortier, Paul Vincent (translator),

Book cover of Stammered Songbook: A Mother's Book of Hours

Book description

'My mother, a house that is slowly collapsing, a bridge dancing to a tremor.'

It started when she could no longer remember the word for 'book'. Then her mind, her language and her identity began to slip away.

This is Erwin Mortier's moving, exquisitely observed memoir of his mother's descent…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Stammered Songbook as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Erwin Mortier is a poet, and this slim, intense volume is a haunting memorial to his mother in her final months. She died of early-onset dementia, and Mortier struggles to find adequate words for a condition that is profoundly connected to the failure of language and the connection of the self to the world.

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