... started as a collaboration between the author and her mother but after Cessie withdrew, it ceased being a journalistic investigation into the Horseman and his crimes (there were other child victims) and became 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 ... Gross-out humour meets Jungian psychology as the book moves between a succession of vivid backdrops ... When it comes to her mother, McLaren’s gaze is acutely honed ... By the end of this white-knuckle ride of a book, the author is finally able to disentangle her own youthful misadventures from her mother’s trauma ... This memoir does demand a coda, though. How will it affect McLaren’s relationship with the woman who bore her? In spite of everything, it’s hard not to find yourself rooting for both parties in this untamed, yearning story of imperfect mother-daughter love.
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.
