I really liked The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. I liked the focus on mental health and introspection. I a, fond of an odd main character. Thanks for the review copy.

Aimee Bender provides readers with a timely novel that shows the impact of a parent's mental illness on a child. When Francie's mum is committed into care, Francie is sent to live with her supportive aunt, uncle, and cousin. Bender provides a perfect novel to show how as a teenager, Francie wants to confirm that she is "normal". Haunting, beautiful novel that is essential reading for parents and young adults. Great for discussion groups.

I have loved every book by Aimee Bender and The Butterfly Lampshade is no different! I love that she includes a little touch of magic in all of her books without them being oversaturated with it. What a magical story Bender has created! Eight-year-old Francie is a wonderful character: clever, sensitive and insightful, with a pragmatism that guides her in protecting herself and those for whom she cares. These characters are easy to invest in, to care about. I just loved this book!

This is a really beautiful story of a young girl trying to make sense of the world after her mom has a psychotic break. It shows how mental illness can effect an entire family, and it's beautifully written.

I love Aimee Bender, and this book, a time hopping examination of mental illness through her immense talent we have missed not just in her stories, but in a novel--she always delivers, even when we have to wait so long to get more from her, it's always worth it. I loved this book so much, and was so thankful to get to read it. What a delight. The book was comforting with the language and story, even as we read through the thoughts of the protagonist, through the dialogue Aimee navigates between Francie, her mother, her aunt, etc, so expert, so amazing, and everything is beauty in Aimee's eyes, even in some of our and Francie's greatest fears and most abject and compulsive/uncontrollable thoughts. I loved diving into this book and have now read it over half a dozen times. I recommend this to anyone, as well as Aimee's other work, which has influenced writers like the great Miriam Toews and other. Aimee gets to use her usual magical realism in an almost more literal way here, seeing things through mind of a woman fearing herself insane, and understanding the way we inherit things, but also the control we have over our lives, and when we think ourselves cursed, or want to have others control us to save ourselves from ourselves.

The butterfly lampshade is an insightful examination of mental health. In this novel, we Francie is sent to live with a relative as a small girl, while her mother is suffering from a mental breakdown. As an adult, Francie has a hard time dealing with her childhood trauma and distinguishing the past and what is a reality, what is memory, and what is a fantasy.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC digital copy. I have not been compensated for my opinion and this is an honest review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish reading this ARC digital copy before it was archived. The book is no longer on my Goodreads "want to read" list, but I will update my review to reflect an updated opinion if I decide to finish at a later date. The author's previous book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, was highly recommended by a friend, but I did not enjoy that book either. Perhaps I am simply not fond of this author's writing style whereas it may be enjoyable by others who loved Lemon Cake.

I was so excited to read The Butterfly Lampshade because I loved The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Aimee Bender did not disappoint me - this book was beautiful and sad and optimistic!

I don’t remember really like The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and I didn’t particularly like this book either. Maybe it’s just the authors writing style but I find it too scattered and almost superficial.

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, Francine is waiting, with her babysitter, to take the train to Los Angeles to live with her aunt & uncle, she awakes to admire the lovely lamp with the butterfly shade.

I didn’t care for this book which dealt with menta illness. Much of it was negative and going from the present to 20 years ago {back & forth}.

Thanks to Net Galley for sending me an advanced reader’s copy for review.

This is my first title from this author. It sounded promising but I just couldn’t get into it. I read 24 chapters and finally stopped.

This was a very bizarre book, and I don't recommend it. A girl spirally into madness is a tough subject for today's world. The book is written in a disjointed manner, and is hard to follow. I do love the cover though!

The Butterfly Lampshade describes the effect having a parent with a mental illness can have on the life of a child. As she grows up and begins to understand her mother better, Francie develops techniques which help her incorporate the odd events she remembers into her life and allows her to move forward. A gentle, depiction of mental illness and its effects.

Too slow to develop and hard to follow for me to really get into it. I kept putting it down but finally finished it just to see if it got better. It didn't, in my opinion. Maybe I am just to practical but I wanted the author to just get on with the story!

This was a great and very imaginative story. I loved everything about it, and wanted every butterfly to actually come off the lampshade and fly around the room! But then again it’s not my book but the wonderful writings of Aimee Bender. Thanks to Netgalley, Aimee Bender and her publishing company for this ARC. I very good book club choice .

A moving story of a parents madness and how it can affect a child. Beautifully written with wonderful insights on how as an adult one learns to get over traumas experienced as a child.

A young girl knows enough to lock herself into her bedroom at night when her mentally ill mother is having an episode. When her mother is hospitalized, the girl then lives with her aunt, uncle and newly born cousin as a 10-year-old. The now grown young woman seeks to solidify her position in the world through memory.

Aimee Bender's The Butterfly Lampshade is a quiet, calming book in which finding one's place in the world is possible because of love. Remembering how situations came to be makes the love more real, more tangible.

Three episodes in young Francie's life hold particular meaning for her, because they are occasions when things not real became so. A butterfly matching the ones on a lampshade in her babysitter's apartment appears floating in her water glass. A beetle from a drawing on a school worksheet appears in the backpack in which Francie stored the paper. Three roses matching the ones on a friend's curtain appear on the floor, and she takes them home.

There is no question the objects are real. The roses are seen by her friend, and her young cousin keeps one of them as a treasured object. Through the years, Francie's mother struggles with her illness but finds a quiet place to flourish in a group residence. Francie grows up with her loving aunt and uncle, and her adored cousin, who adores her right back. The family's quiet love is a bedrock to Francie's existence, which is most helpful when she doesn't always feel tethered to the world.

Now grown and ready to face her own questions about the three instances of objects becoming real, and what it means to her place in the world, Francie undertakes daily quiet sessions. In a tent that she and her cousin, Vicky, set up on her apartment balcony, Francie lets her mind go where it will, down any memory rabbit hole.

It's a brilliant way for Bender to chronicle Francie's life growing up, going back and forth to incidents that held strong significance to her, and go focus on incidents more than once as her ability to remember deepens.

In addition to the larger narrative about love and being solidly in the world, the memories also let the reader in on why Francie, even as a grown woman living alone, still feels compelled to be locked in at night. It's something she felt was necessary even after moving in with her aunt and uncle. When the "why" is revealed, it fits in with the larger narrative of why Francie feels unhinged in the world.

The reader also learns why Francie settles into finding objects and reselling them online, sending them along their journey to become objects with new meaning to new owners.

Anyone who has read Bender's earlier work knows her remarkable talent at descriptive passages that feature stirring language and serve her story. That talent is on full display in The Butterfly Lampshade, as here:

We are all locked in rooms in different ways, and part of growing up is finding different kinds of keys, and meeting the people who will help free you.

May you find the people who are your keys.

A story centering on mental illness and the toll it takes on family members. Mother and child relationships with quirky outcomes in personalities. Fantastical perceptions causes daughter to question own sanity. A sad novel.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

Mental Case
Aimee Bender bends the universe is delightfully disturbing ways. Her earlier novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is exactly as melancholic as it sounds and her blurred lines of being feel alternative without using the easy-out but hard to trust supernatural. In The Butterfly Lampshade, mental illness blends with an ability to manifest the physical in one little girl now young woman coming to terms with her inheritance, the ties of love and blood, and a history so unusual she built a small tent in which to contain her memories.

(I like the UK version of the cover so much more--guess there’s a limit to just how disturbed I like to be.)

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

The opening chapter of this book gripped me right away. In that chapter, 8-year old Francie's mother has a psychotic episode and is taken away. Francie is temporarily left in the care of her babysitter until transportation can be arranged to her aunt's house in California. While at the babysitter's place, Francie becomes enthralled by a lamp with a butterfly shade. Francie finds a dead butterfly exactly matching the ones from the lampshade floating in her cup of water and gulps it down before the sitter can spot it. And so begins Francie's story.

The story flits and floats backwarrds and forwards in time from current day when Francie is an adult with a thriving Ebay business to back when she was a child staying with the sitter and the times in between. Francie questions her own mental health while she still tries to unwind what happened in her childhood. The writing was lovely but for me there was almost too much floating that the story couldn't quite settle with me. I am a long time Aimee Bender fan so I am always thrilled to read anything by her. This was worth the read to me but isn't my favorite of her books.