Publishers Weekly
★ 05/30/2022
A mother’s fraught history prompts an intelligent and affecting interrogation of generational trauma in the magnificent latest from McLaren (A Better Man). When a teenage McLaren was raped by a friend, her mother, Cecily, confided in her about her own history of abuse: as a 12-year-old, she was groomed and raped by her horseback riding instructor, referred to here only as the Horseman. The abuse continued for several years and would reverberate through both Cecily and McLaren’s lives—as McLaren’s therapist explained, “ can be... passed down. Especially between mothers and daughters who lack boundaries.” Cecily took pride in being a best friend rather than a mother to McLaren—openly discussing her sex life and leaving McLaren to take care of herself in their bustling household. McLaren, meanwhile, remained fascinated by the specter of the Horseman on their lives: “The story of the Horseman had become something else—a story that was my mother’s but also indisputably mine. In that story, my story, there were no obvious victims or predators, just a mother and a daughter trying and failing to love each other.” As McLaren untangles their complicated bond, she offers an unconventional meditation on consent, love, and motherhood that’s imbued with radical compassion when McLaren later becomes a mother herself. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of family ties at their most complex and beautiful. (July)
From the Publisher
"An intimate voyage into the deepest, darkest heart of motherhood and daughterhood, musing too on consent, victim narratives and the ownership of stories. The result is a work of probing insight and undaunted compassion; one that’s fearlessly engrossing, frequently funny and sometimes plain hair-raising." — The Guardian
"A mother’s fraught history prompts an intelligent and affecting interrogation of generational trauma in the magnificent latest from McLaren. . . . As McLaren untangles their complicated bond, she offers an unconventional meditation on consent, love, and motherhood that’s imbued with radical compassion when McLaren later becomes a mother herself. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of family ties at their most complex and beautiful.” — Publishers Weekly (starred)
"If Edward St. Aubyn were to write an episode of 'Euphoria,' it might come close to Leah McLaren's astonishing memoir. Ecstatically wild and weirdly fun, this book has me praying that it is the first installment of a series—and that I'll be seeing more of this latchkey kid and her mother, both of whom are brilliantly flawed, and make cardboard cutouts out of the rest of us. Leah has written a poignant and brave modern gothic. I am blown away, madly in love." — Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She
“Readers will be fascinated by this richly detailed yet never sensationalized account that serves to illustrate the many ways trauma can cast a shadow over a family for generations. McLaren has a difficult story to share, and she does it with kindness and clear-eyed forgiveness.” — Booklist
"Mordant, clear-eyed, loving, devastating. Richly evocative, propulsive, and so well written—her prose sparkles like sunshine over deep water." — Aida Edemariam, author of The Wife's Tale
“Raw and beautiful—I was riveted all the way through.” — Annie Macmanus, author of Mother, Mother
“The mother/daughter relationship is almost impossible to be honest about. Especially if the connection is as complicated as this one: a tangle of love, jealousy, selfishness, narcissism, yearning, and resistance. But Leah McLaren goes there, and the results are never less than riveting. You may wince; you may blush. But you will see your own parent/child relationships anew.” — Johanna Schneller, co-author of The Last Doctor
“Where You End and I Begin is a burningly true and gorgeously written memoir of a complex mother and daughter relationship. At its heart, this is a freshly told story by a great writer about an under-parented generation, where children were free to realize themselves, but also perhaps to become lost in the process. You’re in good hands with Leah as she guides you through the pain and joy of her unfettered childhood.” — Cathrin Bradbury, author of The Bright Side
“Exquisitely painful, funny, recognizable and so full of love; hot of heart and cool of mind. A wonderful achievement.” — Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of Fayne
Sarah Polley
"Riveting and ruthlessly incisive, this book is a deep, courageous excavation of the subterranean, passionate layers between a mother and a daughter and the histories that shape our futures. I could not and would not put it down."
Lauren Mechling
"If Edward St. Aubyn were to write an episode of 'Euphoria,' it might come close to Leah McLaren's astonishing memoir. Ecstatically wild and weirdly fun, this book has me praying that it is the first installment of a series—and that I'll be seeing more of this latchkey kid and her mother, both of whom are brilliantly flawed, and make cardboard cutouts out of the rest of us. Leah has written a poignant and brave modern gothic. I am blown away, madly in love."
Aida Edemariam
"Mordant, clear-eyed, loving, devastating. Richly evocative, propulsive, and so well written—her prose sparkles like sunshine over deep water."
Annie Macmanus
Raw and beautiful—I was riveted all the way through.
Kirkus Reviews
2022-06-16
In the process of writing a book about her mother’s stories of her childhood trauma, the author found herself in a tussle over who owns the story.
"In my mother’s narrative of our lives,” writes McLaren, “the one I accepted and understood, the Horseman was both the clue and the final reveal. He was the keystone in the arch, the signature at the bottom of every page. As Homer Simpson once observed of beer, the Horseman was the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems." The author describes how she wanted to use her mother’s stories of abuse, starting at the age of 12, by her riding teacher, the Horseman, as material for a memoir, a project on which her mother, also a writer, had agreed to collaborate, according to McLaren. However, once the book was sold and the manuscript begun, her mother, Cecily Ross, withdrew her permission, deciding to keep the story for her own use, the author says. Rather than comply, McLaren chose to weave the unfolding conflict into the narrative, including the fact that her mother beat her to print with a 2020 essay in the Literary Review of Canada aggressively titled "This Story Is Mine." Her daughter disagrees. "Stories are like children,” she writes, “and children are like barn fires….Go ahead, toss a match in the hay. After that the thing will live and breathe. It will go where it wants. You cannot pretend to own it any more than you can control it." In the end, McLaren took a compromise position, minimizing the Horseman material and centering the mother-daughter relationship and other stories about her childhood—from a cruel game she played with her little sister to the pitched battles she fought with her stepmother to what seems like an early discovery of microdosing when she was in high school: "I spend my school days in a blur, snacking from the bottomless ziplock bag of magical fungus….Taken in small quantities, mushrooms lift my spirits."
A lot of good writing in search of a story with some juice left in it.
