Casting with a Fragile Thread: A Story of Sisters and Africa

"Yes, Wendy Kann’s mother was bipolar and had a definite problem with alcohol. I picked this book because I love it. It’s beautifully written, so lyric. Her prose is haunting. Everyone knows Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight , but this is another African memoir that is just as enthralling and superbly written as that one, about growing up white in what was Rhodesia. It’s another mother-daughter relationship. Her mother is mentally ill and her father dies while she was still quite young and she and her sisters live with their stepmother. Yes! I never understood why anyone would make up stuff in a memoir, because the whole point is to get to the truth about what happened to you. It’s therapeutic. So if you lie about it you are just lying to yourself. Many times, I think, this is a way of going back through your past and asking how you got where you are and maybe get to some closure. These are all about daughters who faced their background with courage, like Marguerite did. The mothers aren’t bad or evil, they’re just very flawed human beings."