Hemlock - Hlne Cixous

A compelling work of autobiographical fiction, HlneCixous's Hemlock weaves tragedy and comedy, narrative andmeditation in its exploration of various human attachments: betweenan elderly but
still truculent mother and her writer-daughter, between the motherand her sister, and between the writer and her vanished butnonetheless intensely present friend, Jacques Derrida, whose deathis movingly evoked. "I have in mind two lovely faces, old women inbloom," writes the author with a backwards nod to Proust's'jeunes filles.' "Here," she says in her preface, "thecriss-crossing paths of my mother and my aunt will come to an endat last. When one old flower is left, what becomes of the otherface?" Socrates is conjured up, along with the poisonous plants ofHamlet, the human comedies of Balzac and Proust, and other literaryand philosophical ghosts who find themselves drawn into the fabricof Cixous's text: "I'm not sleeping," writes the protagonist. "Aworm is drilling my brain. It's a phrase I heard in the hellishjuice of the jusquiame. I pour it into my own ear. 'I'mafraid Mama will die'."

In this new work Hlne Cixous continues to exploreand expand the boundaries of narrative, slipping from thought tothought and from image to image, so as to render every action, fearand thought palpable to the reader.