Mother: A Memoir - Softcover

Nicholas Royle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1912408570 ISBN 13: 9781912408573

Publisher: Myriad Editions, 2020

Synopsis

"A tender and graceful study of parents and children, and a finely judged and measured attempt to capture the flitting, quicksilver shapes of what we keep and what we lose: the touch, the tone, the gaze of the past as it fades. It is a moving and beautifully achieved memoir, and a testament to the writer's skill and generosity of spirit." -- Hilary Mantel

Before the devastating 'loss of her marbles', Mrs Royle, a nurse by profession, is a marvellously no-nonsense character, an autodidact who reads widely and voraciously - from Trollope to Woolf, Tennyson to Foucault - swears at her fox-hunting neighbours, and instils in the young Nick a love of reading and of wildlife that will form his character and his career.

In this touching, funny and beautifully written portrait of family life, mother-son relationships and bereavement, Nicholas Royle captures the spirit of post-war parenting as well as of his mother whose dementia and death were triggered by the tragedy of losing her other son - Royle's younger brother - to cancer in his twenties.

At once poetic and philosophical, this extraordinary memoir is also a powerful reflection on climate crisis and 'mother nature', on literature and life writing, on human and non-human animals, and on the links between the maternal and memory itself.

"In our present time of anxiety and global virus death tallies, this graceful memoir seems particularly pertinent." -- The Independent

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he established the highly successful MA in Creative and Critical Writing in 2002. He has also had a central role in the shaping of creative writing teaching at Sussex at undergraduate level over the past fifteen years. Nicholas has published two novels with Myriad; Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017). Nicholas has written numerous other critical books, including the academic best-selling textbook An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Fifth edition, 2016) (with Andrew Bennett).

Edition details

• Publisher: Myriad Editions
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1912408570
• ISBN 13: 9781912408573
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224