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Book Review of Someone Not Really Her Mother

Someone Not Really Her Mother
reviewed on + 5 more book reviews


Wonderful story, short but deals well with a tough subject. Back of the book says:

How well do we know the people we love? Chessman examines this question in three generations of women in a contemporary family. As dementia overtakes Hannah Pearl, she slips backward in memory to her escape from France in 1940: boarding the ferry with her heavy bags; the whistle of bombs raining down on London; the family she left behind. Her daughter Miranda, distraught by Hannah's fading lucidity and sudden switch to her childhood French, tries desperately to hold her in the present. Fiona, a new mother and the older of Hannah's two granddaughters, ignores the ghosts of her grandmother's past, while her sister, fiery Ida, seeks to delve into Hannah's story, eventually returning to France to find the roots of her grandmother's life--and her own.