Barb’s Reviews > The Stationery Shop > Status Update

The rest of it--the politics, the mental illness that drowned my mother, the cruel twists and turns--well, there is a fetid underside to like sometimes.

I didn't want to tell you all that had happened. It made me ashamed and it made me confused. I wanted my mother to be normal, to be like other mothers. She had the rage, she had the depression, she was violent, she was cruel, she refused to let me live in peace.

...she had bitten the tops off several eggplants because she said the greengrocer had treated her like a lowly peasant...I had melted in shame...she cornered the beet seller and his daughter, told him he should never take his eye off his daughter because she could easily become a whore...When she was overtaken by these manic forces, my mother's cruel streak whipped out of her like a snake, unable to be contained.