HOW TO LOVE YOUR DAUGHTER

Why has an adored child abandoned her parents’ home, lied about her whereabouts, and concealed her new family?

Israeli writer Blum’s brief, sometimes stiflingly close-focus new novel opens with Yoella Linden secretly watching her daughter Leah’s family from the outside, through a window. Leah walked out of her parents’ home in Israel at age 18 and pretended she was traveling the world; in fact, she had settled in Groningen, Holland, married, and become a mother herself, to two daughters. In a cool narrative voice, Yoella takes her time to unpack the mystery of Leah’s disappearance, interleaving memories of the girl’s childhood with glimpses of her own marriage, references to the mother-daughter fiction she has read, and episodes depicting her mental fragility. Yoella has been seeing a psychiatrist for 16 years to help her deal with intermittent depression that began at age 9. Leah’s childhood is conveyed in intimate domestic scenes, often filled with reciprocated feelings across the years. Despite occasional power struggles and discord, Leah was “one of those girls who was endlessly loved by their parents…the love of our lives.” But around the edges of this familial norm, we learn about more troubling aspects of Yoella’s marriage to Meir: his occasional affairs; his love for Leah but opposition to having further children, leading to abortions. And slowly another narrative takes center stage—Yoella’s response to a crisis of Leah’s making, leading to collusion and manipulation and a devastating outcome. Bit by bit Blum’s novel reveals itself to be a dissection of misapplied maternal love in one particular instance, in which emotions and impulses contradict themselves and turn inside out. Part detective story, part morality tale, this is a disturbing story of being damaged and damaging.

A deft, claustrophobic tale that takes the shine off motherhood’s halo while sideswiping men, too.