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Our Mother's House

Our Mother's House

Julian Gloag, introduction by Oliver Gloag

$18.95
$18.95
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The March 2027 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club.

"Mother died at five fifty-eight." So begins this story of seven extraordinary children who, faced with the unknown terrors of being sent to the orphanage, decide not to report their mother's death. They bury her in the garden and build a tabernacle over her grave. To the outside world they pretend she is ill and confined to her room.

Problems begin immediately. Curious officials show up to make inquiries. Kindly neighbors (or are they?) knock on the door, offering assistance. The children fall to quarreling. Then a spellbinding stranger appears, claiming to be their father. He agrees to keep their secret—and from that point the story moves relentlessly to its climax.

A paranoid, tantalizing, haunting parable, very much the equal of Lord of the Flies or We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Our Mother's House is a tour de force of dark design.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9798896231271
Pages: 320
Publication Date:

Praise

I read this book with great pleasure and deep admiration.
—Evelyn Waugh

This is an extraordinary book. Our Mother's House is a cause for excitement and rejoicing . . . Full of disturbing implications about the nature of children and the nature of organized societies. Each development is surprising, but right. Each child is wholly believable. Our Mother's House provokes thought as well as arousing rapt interest.
—The New York Times

[Our Mother’s House] drew me into its world from the first page and held me there; indeed, still holds me two days after the book has been closed . . . A penetrating and touching story, which at every point touches on even more than it speaks.
—Christopher Fry

[The novel] achieves explosive effects with seemingly unpromising material.
—The London Magazine

Readers who have admired Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle or William Golding's Lord of the Flies should have a fine, grisly time with Our Mother's House.
—Orville Prescott, The New York Times

A startling and impressive book.
—Baltimore Sun

A minor miracle.
—TIME

Tense and chilling.
—New York Post

Uniformly excellent.
—Pittsburgh Press

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