loving mom, hating mom

Tatiana Tibuleac: The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes. 2026. Translated to English by Monica Cure. 

“That morning when I hated her more than ever, mom turned 39.

She was short and fat and ugly the most useless mother ever ."

I think that the most enjoyable - in literature - for me, are the most stories with the most complex human connections, most preferably family connections, usually non-romantic relationships.

So, when a book begins with those words, I sense so much emotions, rage, anger, contempt, disgust, I sense also a broken love, affection. Rejection, missing.

All those human emotions what are an eternal source of a good unsettling atmospheric story.

This story - this story I loved. It had all I needed from excellent literature.

The writer is new to me, a moldovian writer (love a voice which is not a seasoned western commercial through and through seasoned in western writing schools..) and the story - a classic coming- of - age story. It is - in basics- a story of a boy (18 years) (a crazy one as he describes himself) and his mother (as said, 39), their last summer. They live in London, the boy finishes school full of rage anger and mother, she has her cancer in the last stage. They hire a house for a summer in France. And during that summer happens all - the stories that have gotten them to this point of unspeaking, disgust, terror even. The reader gets glimpses of their past, of a father leaving the family, his new wife. A little sister who died and who they both, son and mother, miss daily. A grandmother, stories from Poland, of being an outsider, lazy days in French countryside, the market.

Now, is the time when Aleksy is already an prominent well-known worldwide selling painter and yes, maybe he finds reconciliation, at least a little bit of peace, a life without som much addiction. Maybe he finds himself, his mother, makes peace with the universe.

Loved loved loved this book - the story, structure, fragments, tension on every page. A love/hate-relationship reader get to form.

Hope more of Tatiana Tibulećs works get to translated soon.