As sinister as this sounds, Laveau-Harvie tells the story with laugh-out-loud humor, and tremendous heart and insight. She has a poet’s gift for language, a playwright’s sense of drama and a stand-up comic’s talent for timing. But perhaps most remarkable is the generosity of spirit with which she writes about family trauma ... despite everything, Laveau-Harvie does not take herself too seriously, and by holding the reins of her story lightly, she gives us the ride of our lives. The book flows with kinetic energy, wit and wisdom. Upon reaching the last page, I found myself turning to the beginning and starting again, not wanting it to end.

...a beautifully crafted, unblinkingly honest, often darkly funny lament for a loving family that never was. The author’s mother was a cruel and abusive narcissist, her father an enabler and Laveau-Harvie and her younger sister the casualties of their parents’ twisted way of inhabiting the world. ... Their six-year journey of navigating endless health care bureaucracy while revisiting familial pain makes for an engrossing and fascinating read, one that moves with the ebbs and flows of Laveau-Harvie’s supressed, impressionistic memories ... Through this protective gauzy 'fog' beams the author’s light: an unflinching and empathetic memoir of the collision between past trauma and new outrage, dotted with precious moments of rueful levity and fleeting beauty.

...[a] desolate story of dysfunction ... For such a force of menace, Laveau-Harvie’s mother is a strangely silent antagonist. Once placed in care, she vanishes from the story; the focus shifts to the father — depicted as a helpless, blameless lamb — and the vulnerabilities of old age. The mother is so absent, I began to wonder if Laveau-Harvie still fears her contaminating charm, her ability to distort reality ... She dips into the past to present a few examples of bizarre behavior — how her mother once crept up behind her and snipped off her ponytail with a pair of scissors — but there is no full accounting of what it was like to grow up with such a woman, no interest in exploring the sources of her cruelty. As a choice it is unsatisfying, but also curiously mesmerizing: the mother as the glacier, the great governing force in their family life, and still too dominant, too vast to be seen whole ... In its compression and odd omissions, its reluctance to diagnose, this memoir is itself an erratic — an outlier in its genre ... Laveau-Harvie depicts her mother neither as a riddle to be solved nor as a woman to be understood, but as an implacable act of nature, who must only be survived. If she remains a hazy character in the book, she inflects its every sentence, its structure, its aversions. She was a mother with a monstrous talent for twisting reality. In her memoir of the aftermath, her daughter tethers her story to the very ground beneath her. She speaks only of what she can confirm; she moves carefully, finding her footing.

While Laveau-Harvie’s warmth and good humour came across, her book sounded like misery memoir. But no. Her agile humour – albeit of the gallows variety – transforms it into something quite of its own genre ... What great freedom is awarded to a memoirist with no loyalties to answer to. Laveau-Harvie chooses not to probe into the backstory of her parents, and why should she? ... What great freedom is awarded to a memoirist with no loyalties to answer to. Laveau-Harvie chooses not to probe into the backstory of her parents, and why should she? ... The Erratics doesn’t drip with pathos or gaze shudderingly into its navel, and yet there are moments of tenderness springing up like flowers in a melting snowscape.

The narrative is an exploration of the complicated nature of family loyalties, as Laveau-Harvie attempts to reconcile with her sister and father after decades apart ... Laveau-Harvie has packed a lifetime of hurt, confusion and disorientation into this slim volume. Words have layers: seemingly innocuous questions can unearth complex trauma ... The story is made more gripping and disorientating by its use of present and future perfect tenses throughout. There are no speech marks either, so conversations, people and places elide and blur ... Humour animates the narrative of The Erratics, creates detachment and sustains Laveau-Harvie’s hope. Yet the gaps in the narrative are often those that Laveau-Harvie finds too painful to describe. These gaps are frozen grief, for which there are no words.

Despite growing up with a narcissistic mother who seems like every child’s worst nightmare (and ends up institutionalized), Laveau-Harvie herself seems self-centered. She lets her younger sister take on the responsibility of cleaning out their parents’ house, holding an estate sale, and then for caring for her father. This well-written saga should inspire reflections on the mysteries and traumas of family dynamics.

This riveting book explores family relationships—and the sometimes-devastating pain they cause—with a darkly humorous ferocity that is both remarkable and eloquent ... A poignant, unsparing, often poetic memoir.

Laveau-Harvie maintains an emotional distance throughout, keeps actual horrors (her mother would occasionally starve her father) mostly out of view, and only refers to others by their family role of mother, father, sister, or uncle. With the hinted-at disownment and childhood traumas left untold, her explanation 'my past is... a blessing in disguise' leaves the reader wanting more. But that’s a minor flaw in an otherwise well-constructed, fluent memoir.