Mothers and Other Strangers: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
"My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man's child, she accepted."
Thus begins this spellbinding story of Elsie's journey toward understanding her late mother, a narcissist who left her only child an inheritance of debts and mysteries. A dancer in Los Angeles, Elsie was estranged from her mother for years. But now she's back in Toronto, trying to piece together the shards that remain of her mother's life.
Meanwhile, she must cope with threats that come—or so she suspects—from The Seekers, the cult-like spiritual program to which her mother belonged. Undaunted, Elsie works to unravel the message her dying mother left for her, which ultimately takes her to the South African family homestead she never knew existed.
A Refinery29 Best Book of 2017.
"Shattering and brilliant, this marks the debut of an astonishing talent." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
"A fascinating look at a unique and fractured parent-child relationship . . . engaging and tense." —Kirkus Reviews
"Sorell reveals herself as an author to watch . . . Ultimately, the sinister romance here, combined with an unflinching exploration of what can contribute to a mental breakdown, left me wanting to read whatever Sorell writes next." —The Globe & Mail
"Riveting." —Good Housekeeping
"A stunning debut, Mothers and Other Strangers grips from page one." —Robin Black, author of Life Drawing
"A memorable first novel, a delightfully twisty gothic with the strange and eerie urgency of a fable or a dream." —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will and You Remind Me of Me
"This book is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand their own parents." —Robert Eversz, author of Shooting Elvis
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Gina Sorell. (2017). Mothers and Other Strangers: A Novel. Turner Publishing Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Gina Sorell. 2017. Mothers and Other Strangers: A Novel. Turner Publishing Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Gina Sorell, Mothers and Other Strangers: A Novel. Turner Publishing Company, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Gina Sorell. Mothers and Other Strangers: A Novel. Turner Publishing Company, 2017.
Library | Owned | Available |
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Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 0 |
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Gina Sorell is a writer who was born in South Africa and now lives in Toronto with her husband and son. After two decades as a working actor in Los Angeles and Toronto, Gina returned to her first love, writing, and graduated with distinction from the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. When she isn't writing fiction, she's the creative director of Eat My Words, a San Francisco–based branding firm. Mothers and Other Strangers is her first novel.
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- A "mesmerizing and quietly revealing" novel about a woman's quest to understand her glamorous, cruel, recently deceased mother (Publishers Weekly).
"My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man's child, she accepted."
Thus begins this spellbinding story of Elsie's journey toward understanding her late mother, a narcissist who left her only child an inheritance of debts and mysteries. A dancer in Los Angeles, Elsie was estranged from her mother for years. But now she's back in Toronto, trying to piece together the shards that remain of her mother's life.
Meanwhile, she must cope with threats that come—or so she suspects—from The Seekers, the cult-like spiritual program to which her mother belonged. Undaunted, Elsie works to unravel the message her dying mother left for her, which ultimately takes her to the South African family homestead she never knew existed.
A Refinery29 Best Book of 2017.
"Shattering and brilliant, this marks the debut of an astonishing talent." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
"A fascinating look at a unique and fractured parent-child relationship . . . engaging and tense." —Kirkus Reviews
"Sorell reveals herself as an author to watch . . . Ultimately, the sinister romance here, combined with an unflinching exploration of what can contribute to a mental breakdown, left me wanting to read whatever Sorell writes next." —The Globe & Mail
"Riveting." —Good Housekeeping
"A stunning debut, Mothers and Other Strangers grips from page one." —Robin Black, author of Life Drawing
"A memorable first novel, a delightfully twisty gothic with the strange and eerie urgency of a fable or a dream." —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will and You Remind Me of Me
"This book is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand their own parents." —Robert Eversz, author of Shooting Elvis - reviews
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- source: Caroline Leavitt, New York Times–bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World and Pictures of You
- content: "Whom do we really belong to and why? This dark, gorgeous jewel of a novel probes the secrets we keep and the complex ties of family, love, and loss. Shattering and brilliant, this marks the debut of an astonishing talent."
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- source: Elizabeth Brundage, author of All Things Cease to Appear
- content: A young woman's investigation of her mother's mysterious past uncovers disturbing revelations about love, family and the fragile bonds that both connect us and tear us apart. An absorbing, sensitive novel that confirms the troubling reality that it's often the people closest to us who do the most harm."
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- source: Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue
- content: "From the first shocking sentence of Gina Sorell's Mothers and Other Strangers, I was hooked on the twisting ride of a woman who receives an inheritance of secrets, debt, and the mess left behind. With stunning prose and the danger of a thriller, Sorell reaches deep into a broken heart and finds what's still beating. I am a fan!"
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- source: Robert Eversz, author of Shooting Elvis
- content: "Gina Sorell has written a complex mystery of the human heart in her poignant debut novel, Mothers and Other Strangers, exploring how the emotional riddle of our parents shapes our lives well into adulthood. To paraphrase Philip Larkin, they screw you up, your mom and dad. Sometimes they intend to hurt you as deeply as they've been hurt. The quest in this wise novel is to realize that the path to healing a childhood wound passes through understanding the strangeness of one's parents, and accepting it, or not. This book is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand their own parents."
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March 27, 2017
Sorell’s debut novel explores a fractured mother-daughter relationship as the daughter seeks answers following her mother’s death. Elsie, a dancer, was estranged from her mother, Rachel, for years. She returns to Toronto from Los Angeles following Rachel’s death. Rachel had told Elsie that her real father died when they were living in South Africa and that she married his brother, Howard, who never knew that he didn’t father Elsie. As Elsie seeks to piece together the puzzle that was her mother’s life, she reflects on how she admired her mother’s uniqueness but despised her for devoting all her energy to her religious organization, the Seekers, and their founder, Philippe. Elsie recalls immersing herself in dance and becoming a prominent member of a touring dance company, always hoping for her mother’s approval but never seeming to obtain it. Elsie flies to Paris, determined to uncover the secrets of the Seekers and her mother. Mesmerizing and quietly revealing, Sorell’s memorable novel expertly weaves Elsie’s search for answers about her origins with her own journey of healing.
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March 1, 2017
In her debut novel, Sorell explores the complex fallout of a troubled mother-daughter relationship.Elsie has long struggled with her emotionally distant mother, Rachel, a secretive and vain woman who often seemed to see her own daughter as competition. But when Rachel dies and Elsie begins sifting through the apartment she left behind, the 39-year-old is confronted by how much she didn't know about her mother. From their early days in South Africa to Rachel's relationship with a New Age cult in Paris, Elsie works to put together the pieces and gain a sense of who her mother was even as she continues to deal with the fallout her mother's lack of care took on her. Sorell slowly reveals the extent to which the independent-minded Elsie has been shaped by her mother, complicating the book's initial straightforward narrative. Although the pacing accelerates rapidly near the end and the book's mystery struggles to deliver a rewarding payoff, most of the novel is a fascinating look at a unique and fractured parent-child relationship. An engaging and tense (though uneven) exploration of the scars our childhoods can leave behind.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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April 15, 2017
Sorell's debut novel may at first appear to be literary suspense, but it's much more the tale of a fractured mother-daughter relationship and its fallout. Elsie's mother, Rachel, has succumbed to cancer Elsie was unaware of. Elsie inherits her mother's apartment, which she soon finds has been ransacked. In trying to find out why she was targeted, Elsie discovers further secrets that force her to revisit her dysfunctional childhood in an attempt to find out the truth about her own past and her mother's. Rachel belonged to a shady, cultlike spiritual group for years and was never much of a mother, putting her own needs and those of the Seekers before Elsie, who has never recovered. More than half of the book is told through flashbacks, which dilutes the suspense of Elsie's current-day search, while tales of Elsie's historyher dancing career, depression, and ex-husbandfall flat. The relationship between Elsie and Rachel is the real gem here, though it takes some digging to get there.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
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"My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man's child, she accepted."
Thus begins this spellbinding story of Elsie's journey toward understanding her late mother, a narcissist who left her only child an inheritance of debts and mysteries. A dancer in Los Angeles, Elsie was estranged from her mother for years. But now she's back in Toronto, trying to piece together the shards that remain of her mother's life.
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