Hemlock

A compelling work of autobiographical fiction, HélèneCixous's Hemlock weaves tragedy and comedy in its exploration ofvarious human attachments: between an elderly but still truculentmother and her writer-daughter, between the mother and her sister,and between the writer and her vanished but nonetheless intenselypresent friend, Jacques Derrida, whose death is movingly evoked."Here," she says in her preface, "the criss-crossing paths of mymother and my aunt will come to an end at last. When one old floweris left, what becomes of the other face?" Socrates is conjured up,along with the poisonous plants of Hamlet, the human comedies ofBalzac and Proust, and other literary and philosophical ghosts whofind themselves drawn into the fabric of Cixous's text: "I'm notsleeping," writes the protagonist. "A worm is drilling my brain.It's a phrase I heard in the hellish juice of the jusquiame. I pourit into my own ear. ?I'm afraid Mama will die'." In this new work Hélène 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.