Love Like Salt: A Memoir

by Helen Stevenson

'Did Clara taste salty when I kissed her? She did. She tasted of mermaids, of the sea.'

Love Like Salt is a deeply affecting memoir, beautifully and intelligently written. It is about mothers and daughters, music and illness, genes and inheritance, writing and story-telling. It is about creating joy from the hand you've been dealt and following its lead - in this case to rural France, where the author and her family lived for seven years. And back again.

'I had always written, and until the birth of Clara I wrote for a living. Once I knew the Cystic Fibrosis gene had unfolded itself in our daughter's body, like a paper flower meeting water, I felt that to write, even if I had had time, or been able, would have been to squander a kind of power which was needed for tending and nurturing. Every moment became a moment in which I protected my baby. Some of it I did in secret, like a madwoman muttering spells. I thought of her as a candle, cupping my hand around her.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir

289 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Rebecca]

Stevenson’s daughter Clara has cystic fibrosis, so I approached and enjoyed this as an illness memoir. However, it’s very scattered, with lots of seemingly irrelevant material included simply because it happened to the author: her mother’s dementia, their life in France, her work as a translator and her hobby of playing the piano, her older husband’s love for Italy and Italian literature, etc. Stevenson tries to bring it all together under metaphors like breath and salt (keywords when it comes to CF), or mise en abîme, but really the central drama is their seemingly idyllic life in France, Clara being bullied there, and the decision to move back to England (near Bristol), where the girls would attend a Quaker school on scholarships and Clara was enrolled in a widespread clinical trial with modest success. Enjoyable enough if you share some of the author’s interests, but not a model of how memoir should be done.

[Eleanor]

On the day I finished this book, I tweeted about it: “#LoveLikeSalt is just. Oh. I mean. Pergolesi and Marot and France and chronic illness. It’s like it was written specifically for me.” I don’t often, if ever, feel that I’ve captured the essence of what a book means to me in my tweets, but there is always a first time, and that time is now. If I could walk away without writing a review of it, I would, and would point to that tweet as evidence that I have in fact fulfilled my brief, for what more can I say? Music that I know and love, a poet the translation of whose work is meaningful to both me and Stevenson, a country we have built our own fantastical versions of, the burden of ill health: it is all there, it is all expressed generously and artfully, and she broadens my perspective by writing not as a sufferer of chronic illness, but as the mother of a child who is. Reading it brought me closer to my own mother; what also helped in this regard was the interweaving of the story of Stevenson’s mother’s dementia and eventual death. It’s about generation and heredity, for sure, but it’s also about community, solidarity, belonging, and the sense of betrayal when a community you thought had accepted you demonstrates that, really, they don’t.

Read the rest of the review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2016...

[sovan]

my adorations, makes me more fond of france, a little more insight to guide me throughout the months i've read it. a sweet little book that doesn't take itself too seriously, a good disposition and a good companion

[Stuart]

'Go and play the organ...but beware of the bat droppings'

...the moon slides in between them and places a silver sword on the crumpled pile of silks...'

...lace at their throats; asphyxiated by marriage'

'...silence...is the complement of free speech'

[Erica Smythe]

A beautifully written book.

[Sandy Stiff]

Really liked the writing style. Realise how little I know about cystic fibrosis. It drifted a bit towards the end but generally enjoyed.

[Rachel]

As a parent of a child with cystic fibrosis and as a person who has had the misfortune of witnessing the devastation that dementia can wreak on people and families this was an emotional read, it enabled me to feel connected to the author and to others in a way that is not usually possible because of the nature of cf and the isolation sufferers and their families feel. I did skip a few pages when she wrote at length about music but the sections about her relationships with her mother and daughter were brilliant, thought provoking and in some ways reassuring and cathartic. A must read for anyone who wants to find out more about life with cf.

[Shirley]

Love like salt. Poetically and intellectually written, Stevenson here shares with us her becoming as a mother of a chronically ill daughter in her account of the years spent in England and France and reflecting on the challenges her family faces in the different cultures and school systems. I especially enjoyed the reflections on the broader themes: The impossibilities of bridging those trenches of life - between over-protective care and care-free nurturing, anxiety and trust, sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Her musings on art - music and writing. On the role of heritage in parenting. On family and friendship. On defining moments and magical thinking.

[Lydia]

Pretentious. More about music and poetry and art than her relationship with her daughter.

[Laura]

Very lyrical, interesting and honest story from a mother about her daughter's cystic fibrosis. Her beliefs about religion and the magical thinking she goes through are fascinating - a different, intelligent take to a purely atheistic approach. I also liked the human hurt she conveys so well when her daughter is bullied at school, and the realities of living in the French countryside and how different cultures can clash around childhood and illness.