CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/31/2020

Chantal Akerman's devastating memoir, 'My Mother Laughs,' is back in stock

Called a "shattering memoir about her octogenarian mother's final years" by Film Comment and Chantal Akerman's "most interior, psychological work" by Hyperallergic, My Mother Laughs is the last book authored by the influential Belgian filmmaker, who died in 2015, just one year after her mother and lifelong muse. "I wrote all of this and now I no longer like what I've written," the book begins. "It was before, before the broken shoulder, before the heart operation, before the pulmonary embolism, before my sister or brother-in-law calls so I may say goodbye to her (forever). Before she returns home to Brussels forever.
Before she laughs.
Before I understand that I might have misunderstood everything.
Before I understand that I had only a truncated and imaginary vision. And that I was capable of only that. Not the truth, not of anything even resembling the truth."