The life of Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt is skillfully fictionalized in this powerful novel about art and passion, narrated by the artist's sister, Lydia. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

Biographies & Memoirs

Chessman, Harriet Scott

Community & Culture

Plume

A Good Morning America "Read This" Book Club pick Named One of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle A lyrical, moving story about the power and importance of memory, Someone Not Really Her Mother follows Hannah Pearl, a woman in her 70s whose memories of her youth in war-torn France and England have started to erase her present life in Connecticut. Hannah's story is constructed in puzzle-like fashion, as her daughter and granddaughters illuminate her life as it has touched on their own. This novel, composed in seven interlinked stories, is a beautiful tribute to the fact that our lives remain mysterious even as they find shape and value in others' hearts.

Someone Not Really Her Mother: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

As Hannah Pearl's memories of her 1940 escape from war-torn France to England become ever more vivid, her present-day relationships with her daughter and granddaughters are altered forever, and three generations of women struggle to confront the complexities of motherhood, family, memory, and the impact of the past on the present. By the author of Ohio Angels. 35,000 first printing.

Someone Not Really Her Mother

Dutton Adult

Thorndike Pr

Chivers Sound Library

 The captivating story of a contemporary American family, in which three generations of  women confront the intricacies of memory, geography, and motherhood, from the lauded  author of Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper As Hannah Pearl’s memories of her 1940 escape to England from war-torn France come  to the foreground of her consciousness, her memory of her more recent American life,  including her relationships with her daughter and granddaughters, is almost erased. Her  daughter, Miranda, attempts to bring her mother into the present and the daily activities  of family life, yet finds herself instead pulled into Hannah’s unresolved past. Miranda’s  daughters confront the shadows of history in their own ways. Fiona, content with her life  as a new mother, tries to ignore the ghostly presence of Hannah’s family, who perished in  the war, while Ida clings to Hannah’s revelations as if they form a lifeline. Facing the  mystery of Hannah’s unspoken memories of grief, each woman must ask how well  anyone can know the inner life of another person, even of someone one cherishes.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

The Public Is Invited to Dance: Representation, the Body, and Dialogue in Gertrude Stein

History & Criticism

Stanford University Press

Back from a tour of duty in Vietnam, Benny Finn strives to find his bearings amid the everyday life of 1973 New England. At a Benedictine Abbey in rural New Hampshire, Sister Clare, a young novice, confronts the day-to-day realities of a cloistered existence. Linking the stories of Benny and Sister Clare is Isabel Howell, a college student soon to discover that she must chart the course of her own life in a way she could not have imagined. Deeply felt and often luminously moving, this powerful story reveals a writer richly aware of the range of human tragedy and tenderness.

The Beauty of Ordinary Things

Contemporary

Atelier26 Books

This masterful and compassionate novel is split into a series of interlinked stories that tell the tale of Hannah Pearl. As Hannah’s memory of the present begins to fade, she increasingly inhabits the world of her ardent and frightened youth in war-torn France and England, while her memories of life in America with her daughter and granddaughters have almost been erased. Throughout the book each character must negotiate the fraught intricacies of memory, geography, and motherhood. The reader will discover and illuminate, with miraculous effect, all the pieces of this intelligent and dream-like puzzle.

Set in the lively Parisian art world of the 1880s, this novel imagines a poignant time in the lives of the American impressionist Mary Cassatt and her sister, Lydia. Lydia narrates the story as she poses for five of her sister’s paintings. Ill with Bright’s disease and conscious of impending death, Lydia contemplates her narrowing world. The novel’s subtle power comes from its sustained inquiry into the very evanescence of life that the paintings record. "How delicately, how perfectly Chessman considers the subtle currents of love and jealousy that mingle in this sibling relationship." — The Christian Science Monitor "A moving and intensely introspective portrait of the way art is created and life relinquished." — Kirkus Reviews

Genre Fiction

Audio Partners

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chessman, Harriet Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Chessman, Harriet Scott

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Chessman, Harriet Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

Someone Not Really Her Mother: A Novel

Someone Not Really Her Mother

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

Someone Not Really Her Mother

The Public Is Invited to Dance: Representation, the Body, and Dialogue in Gertrude Stein

The Beauty of Ordinary Things

Someone Not Really Her Mother

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper