June reading list

In lockdown life this month I reread a few old favourites, including some Fitzgerald short stories, and two new books that share the theme of mother and daughter.
The first novel, 'Feebleminded' was the book choice for our reading group, which now takes place as a zoom meeting.

I disliked this book intensely and had it not been up for discussion would not have bothered to read beyond the first page. Mercifully it is a very short book! The author is a young Argentinian woman and her writing has received high praise. The story is constructed as the stream-of-consciousness howl of two damaged women, the mother and adult child, both nameless throughout.
"Ariana Harwich again takes us into the darkest recesses of the imagination with this deliriously disturbing account of a mother-daughter relationship. Driven to the edge by the men in their lives, both absent and present,they oscillate between erratic bursts of housework, lazing in the garden and drunken escapades."

I much preferred Laura Cumming's non-fiction account of the kidnapping of her mother when she was a child. The book tells the story of the detective work done by the author to discover the secret behind this strange happening.

Laura's mother had been adopted when she was three years old, prior to the kidnapping,  and many opportunities were missed to find out about her birth parentage, apparently due to a wish not to upset the woman who had brought her up.
The author is an art critic on the Observer newspaper and she references various art works and images through the book, making at times what, for me, were somewhat tenuous connections. I felt that it could have been edited a little more crisply so was quite a frustrating read at times. It was also very sad.

The two books could not be more different. Great love and respect of her mother was evident throughout Laura Cumming's book, whereas the relationship that Ariana Harwicz portrays in 'Feebleminded' is poisonous. (The book meeting was divided, one or two loved the book, other responses were more like mine.)