New Book
From the author of the beloved New York Times bestseller The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake, a luminous, poignant tale of a mother, a daughter, mental illness, and the fluctuating barrier between the mind and the world. On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents — her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact — she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her relationship to reality.
About the Author:
Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Color Master, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller, An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into 16 languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
A Luminous Interview with Author Aimee Bender, “The Butterfly Lampshade”
The first novel in 10 years from the author of the beloved bestseller “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,” Aimee Bender presents a luminous, poignant examination of mental illness; the broken love between a mother and daughter; and the universal pull to better understand ourselves, our relationships to our family, and our place in the world.
