A Perfect Mother

by Katri Skala

Overview

During a visit to Trieste in Northern Italy to research his long lost great-grandfather, Jacob meets Charlotte and Jane, and the three are forced to confront their individual and shared histories. Their sense of themselves is challenged and they must piece together a future none of them saw coming.

A Perfect Mother asks big questions: What do we inherit from the broken histories of our parents and our grandparents and how does this shape our own sense of identity? Can we ever escape the past? Are stories, the ones we are told and the ones we tell, integral to how we know each other and how we love? What does it mean to be a good parent, let alone the perfect mother?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780995647879
Publisher:	Hikari Press
Publication date:	10/07/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.47(d)

Editorial Reviews

‘Ms Skala conveys the shadowed charm of these story-haunted stones. Her Trieste is never an abstraction, but it becomes a potent metaphor for the mask of beauty that violence may wear.’ The Economist

‘A Perfect Mother is a highly ambitious novel of ideas and a powerfully involving drama.’ Derek Johns, author of Ariel: a literary life of Jan Morris

‘A wonderfully accomplished novel…It manages to be complex and compulsively readable at the same time… It tells a story of attraction, parenthood and madness with great psychological subtlety, while also creating an unforgettable sense of place, equally at home in England and in Italy. I haven’t encountered as beautiful a portrait of Trieste and its culture in many years.’ Vesna Goldsworthy, author of Gorsky and Monsieur Ka

‘A truly impressive first novel … Atmospheric, fascinating and very moving. I highly recommend it.’ Christina Patterson, columnist, broadcaster and author of The Art of Not Falling Apart

A Perfect Mother is a gripping read – subtle and intense, with real dramatic tension as Jacob tries to decipher the truth about Charlotte…Trieste is delectably done, and a great locus for a book that hangs on the opposition of what’s settled, familial, bourgeois, accrues wealth; and what’s displaced and fugitive in economic, psychic, historical and racial terms. Alison Fell, author of The Pillow Boy of the Lady Onogoro and Tricks of the Light

‘This is a highly accomplished first novel, with a compelling story that explores relationships, love, parenting, violence and legacy, all set against the uncertainty of whether a crime has been committed. It beautifully evokes Trieste , with all its cultural and political complexities, as well as the sense that everything is at a crossroads - much like the history of Trieste itself. .. For me, the joy of A Perfect Mother is as much to be found in the haunting plot and sense of place as it is about the precise, mature and clear-eyed prose style that would suggest a writer at the peak of their career and not, as is the case, a debut novelist. Cathy Moore, director of Cambridge Literary Festival

The storytelling in A Perfect Mother is so accomplished, the plotting so deft, that it comes as quite a surprise to discover this is Katri’s first novel.’ Charlotte Griffiths, Cambridge Edition

‘This is a complex tale of love and loyalties, of mental illness, the impact of loss and the fragility of trust...A dark tale with depth that draws the reader in. An impressive debut.’ Jackie Laws, Never Imitate

‘A deeply complex novel of families and relationships past and present. Katri Skala is not afraid of bringing challenging subjects into what is at times a dark storyline. A Perfect Mother is superb first novel and one I highly recommend.’ John Fish, The Last Word Book Review

From the Publisher