The Butterfly Lampshade

______________________________________ ‘The Butterfly Lampshade is an unflinching, understanding portrayal of a youth touched by mental disorder. As constantly, Aimee Bender’s regard for the child and the child within translates into wisdom and magic on the page.’ Jing-Jing Lee, author of How We Disappeared On the night her mother is required to a psychological medical facility after a psychotic episode, 8 year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter. Next to the sofa on which she’s sleeping, there is a lamp that captures her eye, its shade decorated with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie sees a dead butterfly drifting in a glass of water. She consumes it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is forced to make sense of that minute, and 2 other occurrences – her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and an arrangement of dried roses from some drapes. Her recall is precise: she makes sure these things were genuine. Regardless of her certainty, she battles with the hold these memories have over her, and with what they state about her place in the world. Told in rich, lilting prose, The Butterfly Lampshade is a wholehearted and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes frustrating power of the material world, and of a damaged love in between mother and kid.

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