Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Mother Is Restless and She Doesn't Know Why: Finding Freedom in the Cage

The Mother Is Restless and She Doesn't Know Why: Finding Freedom in the Cage

Parker, Gemma

Paperback

Biographies GeneralLiterary Figures

Publisher Price: $19.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date January 19, 2027

ISBN10: 1761636723
ISBN13: 9781761636721
Publisher: Scribner Australia
Published: Jan 19 2027
Pages: 272
Language: English
Crackling with intelligence and wit, a 'shimmering' (The Conversation) memoir about how nihilism might just get you through.

The Guardian's best Australian books out in March
The Australian's most anticipated books of 2026

'Here is how I start: I read Nietzsche. I read Nietzsche in bed, with a chest cold. I highlight things in green and draw exclamation marks in the margins. I text friends. You wouldn't expect I could be having so much fun reading Nietzsche, I tell them. They are worried about their children, about lockdown, about money, about their marriages. I am reading Nietzsche, I repeat. I text them quotes from Nietzsche. They do not reply.'

Gemma Parker's parents were impulsively itinerant, and her literary heroes were utterly committed to following their muse, dashing into foreign lands and up mountainsides. To write properly about nihilism, she herself surely needs to go to Paris! But she's stuck - by a job, by children, then by covid.

Nietzsche says that to be worth anything at all, art - and life - needs to break all rules and work itself out from scratch. As Parker reads the great philosopher's work more deeply - and that of other celebrated nihilists Camus and Beckett - she discovers the life-affirming magic of believing nothing matters. And to find a way of being free, even at home.

Both witty and wise, funny and profound, The Mother is Restless opens up fresh ways of thinking about life, for fans of Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Olivia Laing.

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