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The Butterfly Lampshade

3.7/5 ( ratings)

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a final psychotic break, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting for uncle to come take her to Los Angeles to live. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents – her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact – she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the possibility the memories yet may signal she’s subject to her mother’s madness.

As Francie conjures her past, and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality.

Told in lush, lilting prose, The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and of a broken love between mother and child.

Format: Kindle Edition

The Butterfly Lampshade

3.7/5 ( ratings)

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a final psychotic break, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting for uncle to come take her to Los Angeles to live. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents – her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact – she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the possibility the memories yet may signal she’s subject to her mother’s madness.

As Francie conjures her past, and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality.

Told in lush, lilting prose, The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and of a broken love between mother and child.

Format: Kindle Edition

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