An Imaginary Mother

Bron was Phyllis Nicholls' first child. An Imaginary Mother is an open-hearted memoir of her mother and their intense relationship over fifty-six years. Phyllis was a secretive, complex and unpredictable woman. Before her marriage, Phyllis worked happily as a designer in Vida Turner's pioneering textile company. After World War II, with a young family, she had to cope with the isolation of a struggling subsistence farm, the tumult of her husband's conversion to a rigid religion, and...
More Description

Bron was Phyllis Nicholls' first child. An Imaginary Mother is an open-hearted memoir of her mother and their intense relationship over fifty-six years. Phyllis was a secretive, complex and unpredictable woman. Before her marriage, Phyllis worked happily as a designer in Vida Turner's pioneering textile company. After World War II, with a young family, she had to cope with the isolation of a struggling subsistence farm, the tumult of her husband's conversion to a rigid religion, and her own increasing mood changes between despair, melancholy and joy. Yet to the end of almost eighty years, Phyll was also a stoic. She saw her 'madnesses' as the inevitable ups and downs of a full life, to be worked around with a mixture of courage, stealth, ingenuity and, whenever possible, with humour. An Imaginary Mother is a portrait in which the sitter and the painter are both revealed.