A prize-winning tour de force when it came out in France, this remarkable debut novel is about a daughter's inextinguishable love for her beautiful and charismatic, Mamam, who smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard and loves too extravagantly. With dark humour and emotional bravery, Violaine Huisman tells an astonishing and ferociously compelling story about a woman who is as triumphant as she is transgressive.`An exquisite evocation of the passionate, reciprocal love that can illuminate its objects, or destroy them, or both'- Andrew Solomon`Captures a filial love as fierce and frank as its central figure' -The New Yorker `A prize-winning sensation in France ... witty, immersive' -Oprah Daily`In this tender, searching book... the daughter figures as both a character in her mother's story and its teller, taking one last survey of the wreckage, as if her own life depends on it."-New York Times Book Review"Camhi's translation from the French conveys Violaine's steady compulsion to understand and explain ... Love hurts, Huisman elegantly examines how and why." -Kirkus