JESSICA HARMON HAS STEPPED AWAY

A woman’s life collapses after she reconnects with her brilliant but cold mother in Gentin’s knotty novel of broken families.

Jessica Harmon, an unhappy 30-year-old book editor in New York City, breaks out of her rut in the worst possible way by quitting her job and breaking up with her perfect boyfriend when his marriage proposal triggers her fear of commitment. Seeking the roots of her dysfunction, she accompanies her poetry professor mother, Cynthia, on a nationwide tour after she wins a coveted prize for her new collection of verse. Cynthia is a great poet who wows fans with her readings, but her daughter knows her as “the most self-obsessed person ever to walk the halls of academia or the streets of the Upper West Side.” When Jessica was younger, Cynthia told her a dubious story about her father getting killed by falling debris before she was born; brought home a parade of lovers; left her with the housekeeper while gallivanting across Europe; and, worst of all, discouraged Jessica’s literary aspirations: “‘You’re a competent writer.’ She paused. ‘Talent?’ Cynthia answered her own question with a shrug.” Then Cynthia is felled by a debilitating stroke, which prompts a reboot of Jessica’s life as she cares for her mother, rekindles a romance with a college flame, and investigates her parentage and Cynthia’s traumatic freshman year at Yale. Gentin’s yarn centers on an intriguingly conflicted mother-daughter duo—both prickly, proud, insecure, and secretly wounded. Cynthia’s transformation is gripping as she goes from someone with an intimidating command of language to a person whose brain can barely summon words to express thoughts. Gentin conveys the pair’s story in vivid, evocative, sensual prose, as when Jessica observes Cynthia’s hypnotic effect on both men and women: “it was Cynthia’s body language that mesmerized….with a penetrating glance, a slight tilt of her hips, or the momentary brush of her fingertip on her breast—so fleeting you thought you’d imagined it, except your mouth is dry and you can barely swallow.” Readers will root for Jessica to emerge from Cynthia’s shadow—and forgive her, as well.

A rich, engrossing portrait of a mother and daughter fencing their way toward a truce.