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9781913512859

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Reviews

‘Nothing sentimental creeps into this portrait of motherhood. García Puig writes from within anxiety, grief, obsession, and psychic terror – the states that churn when new life arrives and refuses reassurance. She exposes how women have long been venerated and blamed in the same breath. Leaning into madness as much as clarity, García Puig carries with her the mothers who came before – Hecuba, Medea, Isabella Thackeray, the unnamed women punished for loving too much or too poorly. This is a breathtaking, ferocious book about maternal responsibility.’ Jamieson Webster ‘A wonderful hybrid book, as monumental as it is intimate. Her words resonate simultaneously with our political and poetic sensibility: with The History of the Vertebrate, all of us crazy women understand the reason behind our melancholy, and we start to sing.’ Marta Sanz ‘""Freedom is therapeutic,"" someone wrote on the wall of an abandoned madhouse. That inscription is projected onto Mar Garcia Puíg’s extraordinarily liberated book, as well conceived as it is executed. A powerful testimony of her experience of puerperal madness. A delirious and sane tapestry that weaves in various directions.’ Enrique Vila-Matas

‘A wonderful hybrid book, as monumental as it is intimate. Her words resonate simultaneously with our political and poetic sensibility: with The History of the Vertebrate, all of us crazy women understand the reason behind our melancholy, and we start to sing.’ Marta Sanz   ‘“Freedom is therapeutic,” someone wrote on the wall of an abandoned madhouse. That inscription is projected onto Mar García Puig’s extraordinarily liberated book, as well conceived as it is executed. A powerful testimony of her experience of puerperal madness. A delirious and sane tapestry that weaves in various directions.’ Enrique Vila-Matas   ‘About the madness of mothers, their weaknesses and their strengths, often two sides of the same coin. An erudite book, tender and tough, and always honest.’ Katixa Agirre   ‘A unique, brave, and amazing book that ties together the intimate and the historical, the familiar and the mythological, poetry and politics, love and pain, madness and lucidity, to delicately illuminate one of the darkest faces of motherhood.’ Isaac Rosa   ‘An intimate story of the thunderous explosion of affections that motherhood means, a story that is in turn political. Mar García Puig gives us the gift of her powerful experiences as a new mother and a new deputy, and with them she traces a link with literature, theatre, philosophy and art throughout the centuries. It is impossible not to be reminded of Deborah Levy’s or Maggie Nelson’s memoirs.’ Luna Miguel

Author Information

MAR GARCÍA PUIG is an editor and author. From 2015 to 2023 she was a member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies for Podemos, where she served on the Culture Committee and the Equality Committee. Her books include The History of the Vertebrate and This Thing of Darkness. MARA FAYE LETHEM is a writer and translator from Catalan and Spanish. She has lived and worked in both New York and Barcelona, and has translated the likes of Alicia Kopf, Alana S. Portero and Irene Solà. She has won numerous awards including the Nota Bene Prize.

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