Author(s): Kathryn Harrison

Non-Fiction

When Kathryn Harrison was a little girl, her glamorous young mother left her in the care of her British grandmother who was raised in Shanghai. To Kathryn, her mother's mother seemed almost unimaginably powerful figure: an imperious arbiter of good taste and a master storyteller, who, when coaxed, might reveal stories of a magic and vanished world. She jilted an array of suitable men before concluding that she was not quite modern enough to have a baby without a husband. Her daughter, Harrison's mother, was no more interested than she in being bound by convention. Harrison grew up a spectator of the remarkable, striving to comprehend these women and yet find her own way to live. In this witty, touching memoir, Harrison writes of the ties that bond mothers to their children - and the forces that can drive them apart. She ponders the legacy of storytelling she inherited from her grandmother, and peers into the deep well of family history from which she draws inspiration for her novels. Seeking Rapture conveys the aching tenderness Harrison feels towards her own children, and her awe of their imaginary worlds that no adult can enter. This powerfully evocative book will awaken readers to sift through their own sense of motherhood, loss and regeneration. In prose that sings, Seeking Rapture chronicles the unforgettable episodes that form the drama of domestic life.