During Mother's Absence

by Michèle Roberts

By the winner of the 1993 W.H. Smith Literary Award and shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize with her sixth novel Daughters of the House, this is a collection of the author's short stories.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, France, Family

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Michèle Brigitte Roberts is the author of fifteen novels, including Ignorance which was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud: Stories of Sex and Love. Half-English and half-French, Roberts lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Reviews

[Sonia Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am surprised that this book has not been read by many more people.
A book of short stories, one story stands out.
A young mother dies and leaves her young daughter of around ten alone with only her father for comfort. They go to France to get over this death, for the young girl her mother is still around, she talks to her, every day, little tricks to hang on to her mother, a land of make believe just she and her mother....
It is only after an older woman jerks her to back reality, back to a life without her mother, that the young girl tears her bond with her mother, emerges from a cocoon she had built around herself. How a ten year old goes through the process of learning to live without her mother is indeed heartbreaking.

[Olivia Neumer · Rating 4 out of 5]

So visceral and gritty, but funny too. She’s a great writer and this collection of short stories was such a roller coaster. I found her stories confusing, funny, bizarre, disturbing, and touching. This was my first time reading Roberts I’d like to read some more from her.

[Frances Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird, worrying and wonderful collection of stories by an author I've come to really trust will show me something a bit different every now and again.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story is astonishing. A fable, gothic, mystic. The other stories have the same generic debt but are more quotidian. Good read.