In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf

Poet and memoirist Christle (The Crying Book) delves into her relationship with her mother and the work of Virginia Woolf in this dazzling account. Raised in New Hampshire by a buttoned-up English mother and an American father in the merchant marines, Christle returned to England with her mother in 1995 for her grandfather’s funeral. During that trip, a teenage Christle was sexually assaulted in the alley behind a London nightclub. In the aftermath, she acted out to gain mother’s attention, but her mother only withdrew further; years later, Christle’s mother revealed that she was molested as a child. Returning to England in the years after her assault, Christle visited key locations in her own family history and the life of Virginia Woolf—who lived in the same part of London as Christle’s mother—in an effort to plunge “behind the rhododendrons” like Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway so she could better understand her mother. With lyrical prose (“If a sign’s words remain the same, their meaning can shift, the letters cracking enough to let us inside and rearrange what was thought to be settled”), a sharp analytical sensibility, and staggering reserves of empathy, Christle delivers a unique and potentially transformative catalog of healing. Readers will be rapt. Photos. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co. (Apr.)