My Mother is a River

My Mother is a River by Di Pietrantonio, Donatella. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780993238000.

The sensitive and powerful story of the love between a mother and her daughter, a love "gone wrong from the start". When Esperia exhibits the symptoms of a disease that robs her of her memory and the very sense of her existence, it is time for the daughter to take care of her and help her rebuild her disintegrating identity. So the daily recounting of the past begins. Day after day we learn about the characters of the extended family, the inhabitants of the small village still without running water or electricity, in a "bright and harsh" Abruzzo, which emerges from the pages like a mythological distant land. And, in the telling, the mother and daughter relationship slowly changes, fluctuating between love and hate, nostalgia and denial.