Mother Doll

A kaleidoscopic novel about the shadow of trauma in Russian history that follows four generations of mothers and daughters

Zhenia is pregnant, her marriage is languishing, and Vera, her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world, is dying. Enter Paul, a famous psychic medium who’s been approached by Irina, mother of Vera and great-grandmother of Zhenia. Irina is an interdimensional being who lives in a cloud of ancestral grief. She hopes Paul will be a willing conduit for her epic story of doomed revolt and nation-rending heartbreak, and that through him Zhenia will be her confessor and grant her absolution for her greatest shame: abandoning her daughter in a Soviet orphanage for children of spies.

But does either woman have what the other needs to understand the predicament they’re in? Or will the very legacy of trauma that they carry be what damns them both forever?

Accompanied by a chorus of fellow Russians also stuck in the cloud of grief, Irina decides to forge ahead. She speaks of the unspeakable, answers forbidden questions, and excavates repressed memories. And Zhenia decides to join her on the journey. Ferociously funny and deeply moving, Mother Doll is, ultimately, a bold and irrepressible depiction of generational trauma and the shifting expectations of womanhood and motherhood.