Witness: A Novel of Love and Erasure
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Book Overview
Every morning, Nessa braids her daughter's hair. Every morning, she watches.
A psychological novel of a mother and a daughter, told from both sides: the mother who cannot stop watching, and the fierce, strange girl slowly disappearing under her gaze.
Nessa Carrow is a good mother. She keeps lists. She tracks milestones. She notices everything: the way seven-year-old Wren flinches at certain textures, retreats from crowds, draws the same strange patterns over and over. After a traumatic birth left Nessa convinced that looking away means losing her daughter, she has built her life around one principle: watch closely enough, and you can keep a child safe.
When developmental psychologist Dr Asha Penderton recruits Wren for a university study, Nessa feels rescued. Finally, a professional who takes her concerns seriously. The data confirms what Nessa has always believed. Wren is stabilising, improving, becoming the child everyone can see.
But Wren's best friend can no longer reach her. Her drawings have gone blank. The girl who once pressed her ear to drains and invented words for things no one else noticed is disappearing, replaced by a child who is cooperative, legible, and praised by everyone.
Wren is becoming exactly what her mother sees. Nothing more.
Set in the kitchens, classrooms and school runs of suburban England, Witness is a novel about the terror of loving too closely, and a mother who discovers that her attention is not protecting her daughter but erasing the parts of her she cannot name.
For readers of Celeste Ng, Ashley Audrain and Samanta Schweblin.
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