The Gift: A Novel

This moving fictional memoir begins as a woman heads home after a meeting regarding her inheritance. Rebeling against the legalese uttered by the attorney, her mind drifts back to her childhood and she sees her life with sudden clarity. On the train, she jots down a few notes, which prompt the poetic outpouring of memory and emotion that make up this delicate novel. The narrator’s mother looms large in her psyche. Labeled “eccen­tric” or “Italian,” her mother in fact suffered from what was ...