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Butterfly Lampshade: A Novel

Butterfly Lampshade: A Novel

by Aimee Bender

Published by Anchor

8"x5.2", 304p, paperback

$16.95

Out of Stock

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents, her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact, she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her relationship to reality.

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