The rendezvous

In a first novel that blurs the boundaries between memoir and fiction, sophisticated eighteen-year-old Louise recalls her unusual past as she sits in a cafe awaiting a rendezvous with her unpredictable mother. Louise's parents split up when she was small and she has since lived mostly with her reassuring, stable, loving father, a world-renowned conductor. After the divorce, her mother, a former popular high-fashion model in the sixties, descended into a chaotic world of drugs and seamy liaisons. Resurfacing after months of international travel, she makes an appointment with her daughter for lunch in a cafe. As Louise waits and hopes for her mother to appear, she reflects on the many letdowns she has experienced at the hand of this woman she adores and who is so startlingly - yet never maliciously - self-absorbed and irresponsible. Hour after hour, waiting for her mother, Louise digs deeper into her store of memories, pulling up incidents that typify the powerful devotion she feels for her mother and the inevitable heartbreak that follows.