Mamele

A stylish, searing drama about the complicated love between mothers and daughters, the indelible impact of estrangement – and one woman fiercely coming into her own.

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‘Fresh and daring'

KATE SAWYER

‘One of the best books I’ve read in a while . . . A real triumph’

ELIZABETH MACNEAL

'A complex story about motherhood, inheritance and the things we're willing to forsake in the name of desire'

AMY TWIGG

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‘When my mother washed my hair she crooned, mamele, mamele, into my ear. Little mother, meaning little daughter, meaning you’re a good girl, Edie.’

Edie lives in a crumbling country house in Broadstairs with her partner Joanna. They have spent over a decade together since the death of Harry, the third member of their polyamorous marriage. It’s a quiet, comfortable existence – but conversations about the mother who abandoned her have recently awoken in Edie feelings she long thought buried.

As Edie’s memories unspool – childhood days among the gossiping housewives of the mansion block, intense adolescent love affairs, clandestine nights in London clubs – she is forced to confront her ghosts and piece together the various parts of herself, as a queer woman and the daughter of a Jewish émigré. Now in her early fifties, she wonders whether there is still time to become the woman she once yearned to be.

In Mamele, Gemma Reeves writes with extraordinary deftness about unconventional families, cultural inheritance and separation, loneliness and aching desire.