About
Standing by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders...is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upends her life.
Based on the intimate diaries Will Self's mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer's attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm of a parent's interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Self working in an exciting new dimension, utilizing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.
Based on the intimate diaries Will Self's mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer's attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm of a parent's interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Self working in an exciting new dimension, utilizing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.
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Reviews
"An extraordinary portrait of the female soul under the conditions of 20th-century misogyny...Elaine is not just a serious work of art, but an unexpected act of filial generosity"
Guardian
"A remarkable period piece...In magnifying her voice so we too can hear her screams across the decades, Elaine is a son's spectacular attempt to give his mother the agency and freedom she was denied"
Telegraph
"It is not a roman-à-clef...but a work of art in its own right"
Scotland on Sunday