The Erratics

A Memoir

By: Vicki Laveau-Harvie

Narrated by: Jacqueline Samuda

Two sisters reckon with their toxic parents through the decline and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty in this award-winning “brilliantly-written memoir... [that] reads like a novel” (best-selling author Margaret Atwood via Twitter).

When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years their mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home.

Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother and encounter all the pressures that come with caring for elderly parents. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favorite phrase during their childhood was: "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it."

Set against the natural world of the Canadian foothills ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir—at once dark and hopeful—shatters precedents about grief, anger, and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humor.

lacked enough content

I was very excited to read this after hearing an interview with the author on the radio. but I feel like the book didn't deliver. although her mother's hatefulness is evident in the later years when the author returns to care for her father, there are scant examples of the mother's behavior during her growing up years. this makes it very hard to relate. I also didn't care for the fact that she consistently an awkwardly referred to "my sister" and "my sister's partner" without ever naming either. if they preferred not to be named, why not give them fake names and indicate in the author's note that the names have been changed for privacy?

This was a good, interesting listen

Was really engrossed in the story. Highly recommend. It kept my interest from start to finish.

Nothing really

Boring book did not get into what the parents actually did or did not do to the girls not enough detail