August 2nd: Lynne Tillman in Conversation with Christine Smallwood

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Lynne Tillman and Christine Smallwood will discuss Tillman’s new book Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence.

The live event will stream directly on this page on Tuesday, August 2nd at 7 pm ET. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be posted shortly afterwards. If you have a question during the event, please email it to Evan@192Books.com.

Lynne Tillman - Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence (Published by Soft Skull Press, 2022)

When a mother’s unusual health condition, normal pressure hydrocephalus, renders her entirely dependent on you, your sisters, caregivers, and companions, the unthinkable becomes daily life. In Mothercare,Tillman describes doing what seems impossible: handling her mother as if she were a child and coping with a longtime ambivalence toward her.

In Tillman’s celebrated style and as a “rich noticer of strange things” (Colm Tóibín), she describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and anxious eleven years of caring for a sick parent.

Mothercare is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore, and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters's Katherine Anne Porter Prize. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at The University of Albany, and lives in New York with bass player David Hofstra.

Christine Smallwood is the author of the novel The Life of the Mind.