Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in Siri Hustvedt's most personal essay collection yet, a scintillating and profound exploration of motherhood, the maternal and misogyny.

Ranging across artistic mothers such as Jane Austen and Louise Bourgeois, psychoanalysis, science, literature and ethnography, this is a polymath's journey into urgent questions about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art. Fierce, moving and witty, it warns against drawing hard and fast borders where none exist.