Reviews

Book of Mutter by Kate Zambreno

leyla_potats's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

alyssa_sian_reads's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

angstybitch's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

chillcox15's review against another edition

4.0

The book of fragments = a perfect vehicle for mourning the death of a parent? I feel like it's a natural fit. Zambreno's long-in-the-works (seriously, the final line in the book declaring that it was written between 2003-2016, which is a gut punch all its own) Book of Mutter intertwines the works of Louise Bourgeois, the writing of Henry Darger, and the author's own account of her mother's illness and death. It's actually a quite soft book, and not too much of an emotional ringer; I read it aloud to my partner before bed.

tumblehawk's review against another edition

4.0

Written and abandoned and revisited and arranged and completed over the course of thirteen years, in this book of lyrical fragments Kate Zambrenonattempts to make sense of her mother’s death. Facts are squirrelly, nested inside rumination and reflection, tucked between examinations of artists such as Henry Darger and Louise Bourgeois and (an artist in her own way) Joan of Arc. The facts seem less important than the way of thinking that’s represented on the page. The grasping. The cycling. Real grief shit. Though on the heady Maggie Nelsonesque side of things. Reminded me, too, of the more recent The White Book by Han Kang, which I feel sure looked to The Book of Mutter for inspiration.

lmrising's review against another edition

reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

furbae's review against another edition

5.0

I had to sit with this book for a minute after I read it, letting the emotions wash over me before I could sit down and write my thoughts on it. Kate Zambreno takes us along as she wades through the debris of her grieving in her usual fragmented style. A work thirteen years in the making, we are privy to Zambreno's mourning. It is a intertextuaal experience, as she draws from her own interior life, while making reference to the work of Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger, and Roland Barthes.

While sparse, Book of Mutter was a difficult read, elegiac in its writing and also heavy in content. Zambreno brings forth questions about one's presence after death, what gets left behind, and whose duty it is to retell the stories of the deceased. Wading through the ephemera her mother left behind as well as the fragmented memories that she and her family carry, the end result is akin to gallery where certain thoughts and ideas are framed, tied together by the single running thread of loss and mourning. Zambreno contends with contradictions, explores her mother's life in juxtaposition to art and artists and tries to make sense of such a monumental experience.

It would do a disservice to the work to try and fit it into a certain genre -- such is the nature of grief, I feel. To try and resolve anything neatly seems daunting.

Anyway, this just elevates my immense love for Kate Zambreno love. I'm a proud member of the KZ hive *waves flag*

bralessgodzilla's review

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

maemaemae's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

dfparizeau's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

I have not felt so profoundly moved by form, function, and content since The Collected Works of Billy the Kid