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

Crackling with intelligence and wit, a ‘shimmering’ (The Conversation) memoir about how nihilism might just get you through.

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‘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.

Gemma Parker is a poet and essayist, teaching creative non-fiction at Adelaide University. She has lived, worked and studied in Osaka, Paris, London and Hanoi. Find Gemma at gemma-parker.com.