In these moments, the psychic distance seems to break down between author and character, which can slow the pacing and distract from the narrative’s present action.

Her emotional connection to her daughter is superficial—although she would fiercely deny that if you asked—because her focus is on herself. It seemed as soon as it was getting interesting Maggie would get high and the momentum would shut down. These insecurely attached daughters often become clingy in adult relationships, needing constant reassurance, from friends and lovers alike.

The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts. Eileen’s parents divorced when she was four and she lived with her mother until she was six when her mother decided that her father was the “appropriate” parent after all.

Flesh and blood, with richly lived experiences; not extras in the story of your life, or one-dimensional foils who materialized the day you were born.This, in the end, may be the crux of a parent’s power over a child: not only to create the world the child lives in but also to dictate how that world is to be interpreted. If I did something that I thought would make her proud, she would either dismiss it as insignificant or undercut it in some other way.