Overview

A deeply moving novel about hopeful beginnings and profound endings - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch 'A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range' IAN McEWAN 'Phillips combines extraordinary perception with extraordinary versatility and power' MARGARET ATWOOD 'Shimmering prose, fierce realism and probing meditativeness' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'The beauty and originality of MotherKind are undeniable' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT One summer's day, 30-year-old Kate flies to her Appalachian hometown to tell her mother she is pregnant. But when she arrives, her mother reveals that she doesn't have long to live. Kate is suddenly thrust into roles of enormous responsibility, caring for both her child and her terminally ill mother. In the same year that she watches her newborn grow, Kate witnesses the gradual disappearance of a woman who has been her best friend and mentor her entire life, and is forced to reckon with devastating loss alongside a joyful new beginning.

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Reviews

A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range * Ian McEwan * Jayne Anne Phillips combines extraordinary perception with extraordinary versatility and power * Margaret Atwood * No number of books read or films seen can deaden one to the intimate act of art by which this wonderful young writer has penetrated the definitive experience of her generation * Nadine Gordimer * A beautiful and moving work of fiction that celebrates the sacredness of everyday life * Chicago Tribune * Delicate compassion and hard-edged honesty... MotherKind is further proof of an extraordinary ability to reflect the texture of real life * Washington Post Book World * The beauty and originality of MotherKind are undeniable... Phillips illuminates, with precision and sensitivity, fundamental aspects of all mother-daughter relations * Times Literary Supplement * MotherKind achieves a finely rendered luminescence of grief... Phillips' is a language-laden domain of both precision and nuance * Boston Sunday Globe * Phillips is the master of her craft and of a story and characters that reach far beyond mere sentimentality into a realm of profound reality... MotherKind is life at its most intimate and vulnerable, and also at its most real * Rocky Mountain News * Compassionate and spiritually nourishing... This deeply felt, profoundly affecting novel, her best so far, exhibits a maturity of vision both keen and wistful... Phillips explores the intuitive bond between mothers and daughters with unforced grace * Publishers Weekly, starred review * An abundantly talented writer * New Yorker * This book, both technically and impressive and deeply moving, is the best so far by one of America's finest novelists... With its shimmering prose, fierce realism, and probing meditativeness, it confirms Jayne Anne Phillips' importance in contemporary fiction * Sunday Telegraph * Phillips' past work has received much critical acclaim, being described as mesmerizing, sensual and exquisite; her new novel with not disappoint... There is an ease in her prose, an authority which transports the reader into the most intimate moments of someone else's life * BookPage * A stunning meditation on family * Salon * A beautifully written, delightfully sensual and deeply moving novel which touches with enormous subtlety on big themes * Scotsman on Sunday * Affecting... Linguistically beautiful... Deeply felt * People * Potent storytelling plucks apart the parent-child relationship and illuminates the complexities of loving and losing... Wrought of pain and intimacy... Imbued with intelligence and sensitivity. The writing purrs with a quiet, steady rhythm * Time Out *

Author Information

Jayne Anne Philips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six novels, including Night Watch, Quiet Dell, Lark And Termite, MotherKind, Shelter, and Machine Dreams, and two story collections, Fast Lanes, and Black Tickets, a debut that influenced a generation of writers. Twice nominated for the National Book Award, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, Phillips is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her work has been translated into twelve languages and has appeared in Granta, Harper's, The New York Times and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. See information and text source photographs at her website, www.jayneannephillips.com.

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