The Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella writes his most American novel yetâa brilliant portrait of a 1950s
housewife, based on the life of the authorâs mother, and an exploration of sexual freedom and sublimated desire
Will Self is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language, dubbed âthe most daring
and delightful novelist of his generationâ by The Guardian. In this brilliantly conceived new novel Self turns
his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox
outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and
wonders: is this . . . it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she
undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist
Party member in peril. Based on the intimate diaries Selfâs mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writerâs
attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm: a parentâs interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the
first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Will Self working in an exciting new dimension, employing his
stylistic talents to tremendous effect.