Speechless

A novelist with the same name as the author dithers for a long time, full of excuses and self-reproach, before he gets down to the book about his mother. When he does, she emerges as a strong-willed woman behind the counter of a family butcher's, a showy stage amateur who raised five children and did not spare the ones she loved. After a stroke her words desert her; aphasia leaves her furious and increasingly lost. The son mixes her slow decline with memories of his childhood, with his parents' fond but feuding marriage, and with the painful day he came out to her as gay.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

359 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Belgium

First published

2009 by Prometheus

Author's age

51 when first published

ISBN

9789044611076 (original)

9789462380455 (World Editions, United Kingdom)

9781642860061 (World Editions, United States)

More

Wikidata