Mother Daughter Widow Wife: A Novel (English Edition)

[An] utterly enthralling piece of music, sharp and soulful and ferociously insightful all at onceThis singular, spellbinding novel isan exploration of identity itself. Leslie Jamison, author of The Recovering and Make It Scream, Make It Burn Wasserman has a unique gift for describing the turbulent intersection of love and need, hinting that the freedom we seek may only be the freedom to change. Liz Phair, author of Horror Stories From the author of Girls on Fire comes a psychologically riveting novel centered around a woman with no memory, the scientists invested in studying her, and the daughter who longs to understand. Who is Wendy Doe? The woman, found on a Peter Pan Bus to Philadelphia, has no money, no ID, and no memory of who she is, where she was going, or what she might have done. Shes assigned a name and diagnosis by the state: Dissociative fugue, a temporary amnesia that could lift at any momentor never at all. When Dr. Benjamin Strauss invites her to submit herself for experimental observation at his Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research, she feels like she has no other choice. To Dr. Strauss, Wendy is a female body, subject to his investigation and control. To Strausss ambitious student, Lizzie Epstein, shes an object of fascination, a mirror of Lizzies own desires, and an invitation to wonder: once a woman is untethered from all past and present obligations of womanhood, who is she allowed to become? To Alice, the daughter she left behind, Wendy Doe is an absence so present it threatens to tear Alices world apart. Through their attempts to untangle the mystery of Wendys identityas well as Wendys own struggle to construct a new selfWasserman has crafted a jaw-dropping, multi-voiced journey of discovery, reckoning, and reclamation. Searing, propulsive, and compassionate, Mother Daughter Widow Wife is an ambitious exploration of selfhood from an expert and enthralling storyteller.