Donald Antrim’s mother Louanne was a difficult woman: an operatically suicidal, chainsmoking, delusional alcoholic who even when sober believed that her cat Merlin was a descendant of the Arthurian necromancer. Seeing his own life bound up in her relentless deterioration, Donald Antrim embarks on this strange, marvellous memoir in an attempt to make sense of his mother and her legacy.

A series of tragic-comic adventures in psychological dysfunction, Antrim’s personal journey takes him wandering across the Southern states of America, tracing the bust-ups, reconciliations, and migrations of his warring parents. Gradually he unpicks the stories of his childhood, and the characters: his handsome sportsman uncle; his hardworking, bewildered Episcopalian grandparents; and his mother herself - alarming, melodramatic, manipulative, reckless and brave. This is a vivid, unmissable Technicolor slideshow of a memoir.

Reviews

• 'I read Donald Antrim's THE AFTERLIFE with admiration. This must have been a difficult book to write … but he performs the dance artfully. Formally perfect, filled with grace, wit and the only sort of love that's worth offering' PETER CAREY, Irish Times Books of the Year
• 'Shocking, hilarious, painful
• Louanne, the mammy, is no longer breathing, but she's still there, in every word. A bad ma, but a great, great book' RODDY DOYLE, Irish Times Books of the Year
• 'A mesmerising, novelistic story of a dysfunctional childhood … THE AFTERLIFE unfolds with precision, bounded by structural elegance and masterful pacing. It is an intensely personal, admirable act of remembrance
• a wry pilgrimage made powerful by the restraint and generosity that tempers every page' DAILY TELEGRAPH
• 'Very few [American memoirs] have the intelligence and grace of Antrim's remarkable, impressionistic account of his relationship with his mother … Other writers might have been tempted to claim that they had come to some kind of final truth about their upbringing. Antrim does not. Aware of the shifting unreliability of memory, he presents a series of vignettes from his past that gradually construct a provisional portrait of his mother (and himself) that is all the more moving in its refusal to lay claim to finality' SUNDAY TIMES
• 'A highly unusual, yet beautiful, paean to his lost mother and vivid, disturbed childhood in rural America … THE AFTERLIFE is a brilliant, enticing work that draws you in with little effort. Your heart reaches out to the boy, and later the man, who must put up with his mother's drunkenness and tempers. A truly moving and memorable work' DAILY EXPRESS
• 'By turns moving and comic, this is a fine example of how to turn family fare into something far more significant' HERALD
• 'Moving stuff, but what makes THE AFTERLIFE exceptional is Antrim's way of telling the tale' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
• 'Wonderful' IRISH TIMES
• 'Antrim dextrously and unflinchingly exposes this story, with its hidden narratives of pain and mordant humour, and in doing so he offers an expertly poised reading of the ways we make sense of memory's knots and coils' TLS

Paperback: £8.99

Published 29/05/2008

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