Plenty of memoirs have been written about fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, but few are as disturbing and fascinating as Jeannie Vanasco\u2019s third memoir. <\/p>\n
\u201cA Silent Treatment\u201d is about the ghosting the author\u2019s mother inflicts on her frequently, for long periods of time and for reasons that are nearly unfathomable.<\/p>\n
Later in life, the widowed Barbara moves across the country to live with Vanasco in a basement apartment that Vanasco and her husband have remodeled for her. <\/p>\n
Once settled, Barbara takes to frequently and mysteriously ghosting her daughter \u2014 abruptly ceasing all communication, sometimes for days, often for months. \u201cOver the five years since she moved in with Chris and me [it amounts] to a year and a half, at least,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n
There is never any clear reason as to why, but during those silent times Barbara, who gave permission for \u201cSilent Treatment\u201d to be written, waits to take out her garbage and walk her dog until she knows her daughter isn\u2019t around. She won\u2019t answer her phone. She keeps her lights off and the door to her apartment locked. <\/p>\n
Vanasco\u2019s response is unusual and fascinating: She doesn\u2019t try to lay blame or criticize, but seeks to understand. She approaches the question of \u201cwhy\u201d from a multitude of angles. She looks at her mother\u2019s childhood and first marriage and sees her as a wounded soul. Even when she has no idea what her own transgression might be, she accepts blame.<\/p>\n
The reasons behind the ghosting incidents might sound trivial, but Vanasco sees her mother\u2019s pain in them. \u201cChris and I went to Home Depot without her. I didn\u2019t drive her to IKEA as planned because of a tornado watch. I called her when Chris and I were driving to dinner. I asked if she could make sure I\u2019d blown out a candle in the dining room. \u2026 That silence lasted three months.\u201d <\/p>\n
The book\u2019s structure gives it power. Present tense makes it feel like we are reading over Vanasco\u2019s shoulder while she tries to figure out what she wants to write and how to say it. She documents her writer\u2019s block, her worries, her diligent, sometimes meandering research into ghosting (including goofy conversations with her Google Mini). She includes ruminations, doubts, chirpy and dishonest texts with her gently prodding editor, and fears that the book will never get done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plenty of memoirs have been written about fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, but few are as disturbing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-16439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}