Madwoman

by Chelsea Bieker

Overview

“The rare kind of book that lives in your bones” (Ashley Audrain), this novel tells a gripping story of motherhood and motherloss and the brutal, mighty things women do to keep themselves and each other alive, marking Chelsea Bieker as a major fiction talent.

The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world…

Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation. 

But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316573313
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	533,435
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel Godshot, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times "Best California Book of 2022.” She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawaii and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

07/15/2024

The uneven latest from Bieker (Godshot) blends psychological thriller tropes with a meditation on motherhood. On the surface, protagonist Clove leads a picture-perfect life: she’s a mother of two, her husband works in finance, and she’s often seen pushing her double stroller around their tony neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Clove’s parents died in a car accident when she was 17, or so she’s told her trusting husband. The truth, she admits to the reader, is that their life is built on a “foundation of lies” she told him on their first date. But when a letter from Clove’s mother arrives from the California women’s prison where she’s serving time for the murder of Clove’s father, Clove’s flawless life threatens to unravel. Scenes from the present day alternate with chapters from Clove’s childhood in Waikiki, Hawaii, where her father would often beat her mother, sometimes to the point that she coughed up blood. Bieker builds suspense by parsing out key bits of information, though some of the twists strain credulity and veer into melodrama. She’s better with the character work, especially in her exploration of how Clove’s childhood trauma causes her to worry she’ll be deemed unfit for parenthood. It’s a mixed bag. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

MADWOMAN is brilliant. The rare kind of book that lives in your bones, as riveting as it is intimate. This is emotional suspense at its best, but it's also a chronicle of modern womanhood, an exploration of what mothers and daughters do to and for each other, and an ode to hope in the aftermath of trauma. Somehow, Bieker delivers all of this in a voice that is fresh, urgent, and darkly comic. A novel hasn't consumed me like this in a very long time. MADWOMAN is on my list of all-time favorites.”—ASHLEY AUDRAIN, author of THE PUSH and THE WHISPERS

"One of the most essential books about domestic violence I've ever read—MADWOMAN is a breathtaking adventure, a fun house, a house of horrors, and ultimately, a love letter. Chelsea Bieker will break your heart and stun your senses. Chilling, satirical, and grip-your-seat daring, Bieker is a marvel, peerless in her storytelling; you won’t be able to turn away from this book, not even for a second."—T KIRA MADDEN, author of LONG LIVE THE TRIBE OF FATHERLESS GIRLS

“MADWOMAN lives at that harrowing edge where despair and violence collide. A story of deceit, delusion, love, and terror, this novel is a scream at dawn, an impossible-to-forget story told by an author whose work I will now forever adore.”
 —RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER, author of WOMEN WE BURIED, WOMEN WE BURNED and NO VISIBLE BRUISES

“Run a live wire straight through the human heart and you might get close to what Chelsea Bieker has done in MADWOMAN, an astonishing, edge-of-your-seat story about an image-obsessed housewife trying to hold her violent childhood at bay. Darkly funny, heart-smashing, and absolutely unforgettable, MADWOMAN is a masterpiece.”
 —RACHEL YODER, author of NIGHTBITCH

"Electrifying and vital, MADWOMAN is literary suspense of the highest order—a page turning study of motherhood, memory, and the menace of an untold past. Chelsea Bieker’s propulsive, unsparing take on generational violence is potent and stylish, rendered in prose that's beautiful and devastating all the way down to the heart stopping and unforgettable end. Sexy and turbulent, witty and whip smart, this is a brilliant novel from a blazing, singular talent."—KIMBERLY KING PARSONS, National Book Award-nominated author of BLACK LIGHT and WE WERE THE UNIVERSE

“Unputdownable. Harrowing while somehow also being deeply funny and furiously wise. Chelsea Bieker is a daredevil and a wonder.”—CLAUDIA DEY, author of DAUGHTER

"Much like motherhood itself, MADWOMAN is a book of beautiful contradictions—shattering and funny, thrilling and nuanced, heartbreaking and life-affirming, scathing yet sincere…I devoured every perfect sentence about the scars we carry both from and for the ones we love. A truly stunning read—this is my book of the year."—ELLA BERMAN, author of BEFORE WE WERE INNOCENT and THE COMEBACK

"This intense, propulsive novel takes an age-old story right up to the minute. In portraying the exhausting attempt to overcome violence and safeguard loved ones, Bieker writes with urgency, integrity and emotional acuity."—CAOILINN HUGHES, author of THE WILD LAUGHTER

“An indelible portrait of what living with intergenerational trauma and a legacy of abuse can look like.

In the guise of a suspense story, Bieker delves into the heart of what it really means to survive violence.”—KIRKUS

"Madwoman is a feminist page-turner—sharp writing meets daring plotting and defiant truth-telling.  The result is a firecracker of a novel, an exploration between two covers."—TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage

From the Publisher

07/01/2024

Calla Lilly grows up under the tyranny of an abusive father who threatens and hurts her mother. Calla Lilly's only friends, mother and daughter pair Christina and Celine, live one floor below her in a high-rise apartment in Hawai'i. When Calla Lilly's father takes a fatal fall from the balcony of the family apartment, her mother is accused of his murder. Christine helps Calla Lilly escape to San Francisco using Celine's identification. Calla Lily, now known as C, fictionalizes her backstory, saying that both of her parents are dead. She eventually marries and has two children but becomes unhappy and unsettled as time passes. When she unexpectedly she receives a letter from her imprisoned mother, asking for help in getting a retrial, C's web of lies threatens to expose itself, and she worries that her married life will collapse if her husband learns the truth. Then Jane appears. C feels an immediate connection to her, but when Jane's true identity is revealed, it brings C's house of cards crashing down. VERDICT Award-winning Bieker's (Godshot; Heartbroke) psychological exposé unfolds as an imaginary letter that C is writing to her mother, through which Bieker explores the results of domestic abuse on a family. The surprise ending supplies a satisfying but somewhat unrealistic resolution to C's conflict.—Joanna M. Burkhardt

Library Journal