Overview

When her 86-year-old mother falls and breaks her hip, Sandra Tyler is 42, with a nursing infant and precocious toddler. Tyler's mother insists on hiring her own caregivers-a motley patchwork of lost souls, including the too-friendly who think Scrabble is a good idea. But when she has a near-fatal fall, it is the author who hires a live-in aide, Chandice, who moves into her mother's house as if it were her own, with her KitchenAid mixer, bake pans, and apple-and-kale concoctions. Where should Tyler's allegiance lie when her mother threatens to fire Chandice for overloading the washing machine? At what cost to their relationship should she no longer defer to her mother's staunch guidance? As her mother's dementia worsens, Chandice warns the author about other daughters ""gone crazy"" watching their mothers become unrecognizable-after her mother's death, the author is admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she sleeps the ""sleep of the dying,"" as her mother slept in her final weeks. But in the timelessness of this ward, she can wonder: was her closeness with her mother not of best friends, but something inherent in their dispositions as a writer and artist-in that compulsion to be seen and heard? With empathy and affectionate comedy, The Night Garden candidly explores what it means for a daughter to have her focus fractured by conflicting responsibilities while still seeking, above all else, her mother's approval, protection and love. Kristine Morris (September / October 2024) (Editor's Pick)

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9781953136763

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""FEW STORIES SHATTER MY HEART as completely as Sandra Tyler's The Night Garden: Of My Mother - and I absolutely loved it. I couldn't put this book down. I became so wrapped up in Tyler's memoir that I found myself crying multiple times, utterly moved by her vivid and heart-wrenching portrayal of the complex layers of motherhood and daughterhood, and what it's like to watch someone you love slowly disappear."" -Katie Bloomer, BookTrib ""Tyler's expression of the difficult transformations that occur between caregiving and requiring care, especially for women who take on traditional familial roles, resonates with human universality. Beautifully honest memoir of an adult daughter caretaking her aging mother."" -Booklife (Editor's Pick) ""The Night Garden of My Mother is an emotive memoir about the entwined nature of generational woundedness and love."" -Foreword Reviews (Editor's Pick) ""HEARTFELT, ELOQUENT, EMOTIONALLY ENGAGING, ""The Night Garden: Of My Mother"" is inherently fascinating and candidly presented, making it of special value to readers with an interest in motherhood, adult children caring for parents with dementia, inevitable grief and ultimate recovery from debilitating bereavement. Exceptionally well written."" -Reviewer's Choice, Library Bookwatch, January 2025 ""LOVELY AND UNUSUAL...Of all the novel's virtues, this is perhaps the rarest: an evenhanded understanding that illuminates both the particularity of the relationship and the universality of mother-and-daughter conflicts."" -Jane Smiley, The New York Times Book Review ""THE NIGHT GARDEN is honest in a hard-won, bracing way. Readers will value it for that. Ours remains a society of denial and here is an unrelenting portrait of love and loss, step by step, humbling detail by detail, in a prose that has transcended self-pity and pain and won its lived perspective."" -DeWitt Henry, Author of The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts and Trim Reckonings ""A RICH AND POIGNANT ACCOUNT of a daughter's complex relationship with her aging mother and the emotional toll of illness, loss, and love."" -Maryanne O'Hara, Author of Little Matches: A Memoir Of Finding Light In The Dark

Author Information

Sandra Tyler is the athor of BLUE GLASS, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and AFTER LYDIA, both published by Harcourt Brace. She earned her BA from Amherst College, and her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, NY; Wesleyan University, CT; Manhattanville College, NY. She is the editor-in-chief and founder of the premier online literary and fine art magazine, The Woven Tale Press.

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