The Butterfly Lampshade
Aimee Bender
3.57 · 14 ratings · Published: 28 Jul 2020
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.
- fantasy 4
- magical realism 3
- literary fiction 3
- contemporary 3
- family 2
- psychological 1
- epic 1
- Add topics
- content warnings
- mental illness 3
- format - reader age
- audiobook 2
- book 1
- adult fiction 1