I'm so disappointed to report that this book, which I was so excited for because of my love for Robin Wasserman's novel GIRLS ON FIRE, just didn't connect with me. The 3 (sort of 4) main characters were all women who were seemingly too similar for me to keep the thread going, especially when the POVs would change chapter to chapter. The mystery, of a woman who loses her memory and ends up on a bus heading to CA from PA, is a great hook however, the book is much less straightforward than a thriller with a mystery to be solved. It is seemingly a feminist take on what it means to have a body, memory, and autonomy. The theme of fugue states is a big theme, and I like how Wasserman connects it to the idea of being a woman and doing what is expected of you. It is an interesting jumping off point, but I struggled to finish the book and it left me sort of in my own future state unfortunately. This will probably work for others, but just not for me right now.

I found ‘Mother Daughter Widow Wife’ to be a difficult read. I couldn’t get attached to the plot, and found the science aspect of the story to be a little too above my head for my interest. I’d recommend to someone interested in psychological thrillers, strong emphasis on the psychological aspect.

I loved Robin Wasserman’s adult debut, Girls on Fire (my review), so was incredibly excited to read Mother Daughter Widow Wife. This is the story of a woman who many years ago vanished and in a psychiatric hospital with no memories of who she was. While there, the head doctor and his protege took a keen interest in her case. Almost 20 years later, the same woman vanishes from her life again and her daughter sets out, determined to uncover what happened. For me, Mother Daughter Widow Wife had a great/interesting premise and well-developed characters, but was missing the edge I expected. At times the story got mired down in too much science and clever parallels between fugue states and musical fugues. I’d have liked to have had more emphasis on the daughter and the missing woman, instead of the protege, Elizabeth, who I found to be surprisingly pathetic. I know Wasserman can write vivid strong characters, but for me they just didn’t shine here.

Note: I received a copy of this book from Scribner (in print and via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I had high hopes for this title after reading some great, intriguing reviews; however, I ended up siding with the majority of the other reviews I read. The struggle for me was the complexity of the plot and timelines. I usually enjoy trying to work my way through tricky reads like this, but when I didn't connect well with these characters, that challenge became a slow trudge. Giving 2 stars for this reason.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman has a fantastic premise. Given how much I loved her previous book, I opened it with eagerness. Expecting a story that focused on the woman who could not remember her past, what I got was a story about exactly what the title lists minus the mother, and I could not stand two out of those three characters.

One of the things Ms. Wasserman does well is to tell her story using four different points of view. We see the world through the daughter, Alice, the widow and wife, Elizabeth/Lizzie, and the patient, Wendy. Four different points of view, only one of which has the benefit of hindsight. Alice is young, inexperienced, and in pain at the absence of her mother. Wendy has no memory of her past and therefore brings instinct to her observations without the taint of experience. Had Ms. Wasserman stopped there, the story would significantly improve.

Unfortunately, we spend most of the time in Elizabeth's/Lizzie's head, and it is not a good place to be. The young Lizzie and the elder Elizabeth are pretty awful. One would hope to see some maturity and growth in a character after eighteen years. This is not the case. Both young and old Elizabeth are obsessive, self-absorbed, and surprisingly lacking in emotional intelligence. I was not a fan of Lizzie's unhealthy obsession with Dr. Strauss, and I was even more disappointed in the person Lizzie became for her husband. Elizabeth spends way too much of her story defending her life choices to herself and to her audience. By the end of the novel, I wanted nothing more to do with her.

The heart of the story is Wendy Doe. Seeing everything through her fresh eyes rips through all of Lizzie's bullshit. Plus, there is something tantalizing about forgetting everything that made you who are. We always talk about fresh starts, and Wendy has the freshest start of all. Her scenes are, unfortunately, too short and too few.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife suffers not only from poor characters but also from trying too hard to be academic. So much of Lizzie's/Elizabeth's scenes include technical discussion of cognition and brain function. In a novel that is supposed to be about self-identity, the inclusion of the science of identity strikes the wrong chord and confuses the message.

Ms. Wasserman can write gorgeous, thought-provoking novels. Mother Daughter Widow Wife is not one of them. The self-identity portion is hit or miss, as Elizabeth never figures out who she is as an individual, and the daughter is of an age where everything she does is an attempt at trying to figure out who she is. As for Wendy, her scenes and perspective are fascinating but not long enough and purely temporary since Wendy disappears the minute her fugue state ends. In the end, you are left wondering what the point truly is and a tremendous sense of disappointment that the magic did not strike again for Ms. Wasserman.

A big thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an electronic copy of this book for an honest review.

The title and synopsis of this book are a bit deceiving, but that ultimately didn't take away from my reading experience. I expected a story about Wendy Doe, the woman without a past or future. I expected to learn about the women (Alice, Lizzie, and Elizabeth) and lead scientist (Benjamin Strauss), who have something to gain from her body, and I guess a story focused ownership of one's body. This book does that, just not in the ways I expected.

It's hard for me to go deep into what makes this book so good without revealing too much, and I don't want to do that. So much of what makes this book so incredible are the reveals, and how they unfold. Unfortunately, some of the twists' were so subtle they underwhelmed me, but writing, especially the sentences that made me stop and think, made up for that.

It doesn't have the kind of closure I typically ache for with a story like this, but that's okay. Wasserman did such an excellent job writing an interesting, thought-provoking story with well-developed characters, it didn't really warrant "real" closure.

Robin Wasserman, author of 2017’s Girls on Fire, sets her latest novel in two different time periods with multiple protagonists.

Almost 20 years ago, a woman walks out of her life in a dissociative fugue. The opening page introduces readers to the nameless woman’s blank state of being. “This body is white. This body is female.”

Named Wendy Doe, she ends up at the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research. There, Dr. Benjamin Strauss offers to house her in exchange for studying her unique situation.

She agrees to becoming a lab rat to feed his curiosity.

Lizzie, a struggling graduate student, arrives at the institute as a fellow, taking on a single subject, Wendy. ‘“For the record, I’m not here to start a new life,” she said. “Just a new research project.’”

But in fact, Lizzie gets both.

Driven by questions of how we form identity, she engages with Wendy, part researcher, part friend. And finds herself falling in love with her supervisor, Dr. Strauss.

In the present, Lizzie is now Elizabeth, widow of the recently deceased good doctor. Her life is in a state of suspension, her career derailed, her husband gone. “I was forty-eight, and I was a widow. A woman who’d let my husband die on me.”

Then Alice arrives. She is the daughter of the woman Elizabeth knew as Wendy, the woman who recovered her memories less than a year after arriving at the institute, thus ending Elizabeth’s study and returning to her previous life as Karen Clark.

“Th first true thing she knew about her mother was the leaving. Her mother getting on a bus, her mother carried away.”

In Lizzie/Elizabeth we see the same character with the space of 20 years between them, effectively creating two separate selves.

The first, a graduate student, infatuated with her boss. The second, a widow with a clear understanding of her late husband’s flaws.

In Wendy/Karen we discover how the body of one woman can be two selves, neither knowing the other.

In Wendy, the fuguer, we see a free spirit, in Karen, we see a fearful mother who once abandoned her life, and now, in the present has done so again, an action that prompts her daughter to show up at Elizabeth’s door, looking for answers about who her mother really is and was.

The complex multiple point of view characters are tied together through themes and intersecting timelines.

Identity. Self. How the past informs the present, and what it means if the past vanishes.

And always, the danger of memory. How we recreate it, and ourselves, through the manipulation of what we choose to remember and how we frame it. “Even a bad memory, after enough time has passed, feels like home.”

Each character wants something. “Lizzie wanted to be wholly seen.” And seen she is, by Dr. Benjamin Strauss. “He was married . . . he was her teacher and her employer. He was the most remarkable man she had ever met, and he thought she, too, was remarkable. She was in trouble.”

Alice wants to be someone else. She arrives to find answers about her mother, vanished again in the present, and struggles instead to become someone new. “You change by making one decision you wouldn’t have made before . . . You are what you choose, right? All you have to do is choose different.”

And in that moment of choice, she becomes Anonymous. Someone unknown and different. She moves back and forth between staying with Elizabeth to learn about her mother, and sleeping with a man she barely knows, building a new identity for herself, a woman with an invented past.

Wendy wants to live solely in the present, part of why Dr. Strauss’s offer appealed to her 20 years ago during her fugue.

“I asked him if he thought he could help me remember. He asked if I wanted him to. ‘No.’ I liked that he seemed unsurprised. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Frankly, you’re of no use to us once you get your memories back.’ I liked that too.”

But can a person truly live solely in the present? “The human brain operates on a delay. It takes one and a half seconds to process what the body experiences. Consequence: there is no such thing as living in the moment.”

Hanging over all of these women is the shadow of Dr. Benjamin Strauss. Is he a savior or a monster? Perhaps a man can be both.

This is an unexpected novel, full of philosophical questions about how we become who we are, what it takes to become someone else, and how much power others hold over even our own understandings of self.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife is not an easy read, but it’s a compelling one.

2 things:
1. I loved Robin Wasserman's Girls on Fire.
2. My queen, Liz Phair, provided a blurb for this book.

That being said.......this book is SLOWWWWWW. Beautiful writing that is buried until clinical discussions. I didn't care about the technical side of things, I wanted more of the story.

I wanted more.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The complex multiple point of view as well as the shifting and connected timelines make this a challenging book to read. If you have the patience to read you’ll discover how important it is to not let others shape our memories and thwart who we are.

"Mother Daughter Widow Wife" by Robin Wasserman encompasses the many roles a woman can play in her life. She highlights this through the stories of 3 women: Wendy is a woman who is found and cannot remember anything about her life and is admitted to an institute that is known for studying individuals with memory problems, Lizzie has won a fellowship to work at the institute and Wendy becomes her main subject of research, and Alice, Wendy's (well, Karen after her memory returns) daughter who tries to learn more about her mother after she disappears again. The three women in this book hold multiple roles within their time in the book. Lizzie for instance serves all roles in the book at some point. It is an intriguing look at the roles women have to fill and how they inform their choices. I felt like the book set the reader up for more than was ultimately delivered. While the book is narrated by women, its main gaze is actually on a man. All the women are connected in some way to Benjamin Strauss, the visionary behind the institute. They all stand in some way in his shadow, and his influence hangs over everyone, so it's frustrating that the reader learns about these women primarily in relation to Strauss, who was not a very interesting character. Additionally, the woman I wanted to learn most about- Wendy had the least amount of page time in the book, and one really wants to know more about her backstory and life after the institute. All in all, the themes in the book are intriguing- the different roles a woman can have in her life, the journey of self-discovery, and ability to change. The frustration was primarily due all of those roles being reliant on one man through the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC for review!

First, a thank you to NetGalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Huh. I honestly don't have much to say about this one because it's one that landed in my DNF pile and also because I hate bashing books that authors have obviously worked so hard and put so much of themselves into (and, really, who I am I to judge?) I appreciate what Wasserman's trying to do here, but it's so confusing from the get go - and not in the fun way like a roller coaster ride that leaves you feeling exhilarated, but more like a tilt-a-whirl that leaves you dizzy and nauseous. Things I like: mysteries - check. Psychological thrillers - check. Stories that explore illness and the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship? Check, check. However, given the way that the story it's written, it's unclear which direction the author is attempting to take. In a word: discombobulating.

I loved so much of this novel - the exploration of memory and forgetting, of the roles women play as they traverse the path from wife to widow, daughter to mother, of the ways women, especially “broken” women are used by men.
There’s a lot of good stuff here, beautifully evocative writing, interesting characters ...but also about a 100 pages that I would have cut (specifically about the obsession about a man and how it destroys the woman’s career and her “she can’t stop loving him”).
I enjoyed this book in waves but there were whole sections where I nearly quit the book..

Thank you netgalley for a copy for an honest review.
Mother, daughter widow wife was a very tedious read. I find my mind wandering especially through the science parts. I just could not get into it. Would not recommend.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife centers around Wendy Doe, a woman found one day with no name, no ID, and no memory of who she was—diagnosed with dissociative fugue, which is essentially a temporary amnesia. It tells the story of Wendy, but mostly those around her: the esteemed scientist who brought her to his facility, his research student who studies Wendy's condition, and the daughter Wendy left behind.

The most interesting of those profiles, to me, is Wendy Doe, which is also the one least explored in this book. Based on the description, I went into it expecting an examination of womanhood and the expectations put upon it by various circumstances, and also a study of finding one's self through that examination. But to my disappointment, this book felt more like a study of the role men play in helping to determine what type of life a woman will go on to lead.

Displayed in both romantic and professional relationships, as well as fatherhood, it was a little too cliched for me. I found it lacking in the most exciting possibilities outlined by the synopsis. I enjoyed the content related to memory—how people shape them, but also how memories can shape people. Those passages were fascinating, which is another reason I was hungry for more of Wendy's specific story. Overall, Mother Daughter Widow Wife may not have maximized its potential, but it certainly offers the reader food for thought.

I enjoyed Wasserman's first novel, and her sophomore effort is even better. This is a psychological exploration of memory, motherhood, and marriage, centered around the voices of three women: a unknown woman who has no memory of who she is, the researcher who studies her, and the daughter who later tries to understand her. Wasserman has a wonderful, sometimes almost hypnotic way with words, and crafted a story that is unique and thought provoking. While I personally prefer more closure in the stories I read, it's clear from the beginning that's not what you'll get, and it's beautiful for it.

What a struggle it was to read this book! The same person is written as two different people (at two different points in time), there are too many characters vying for attention, and too many plots distracting from what the reader was lead to believe was the main plot: a woman in a fugue state. Instead, we get a cliché affair, a woman trying to find out about her mother (and really figure herself out), and a whole bunch of unlikeable characters. The reader gets little of the central character, Wendy Doe. And even then it is usually through someone else's view. To make the reading more cumbersome was the constant inclusion of scientific information related to Wendy Doe's case. It seemed at odds with the rest of the book and didn't seem to add any value to the story but instead to separate the reader from the ongoing story. Because, really, Wendy Doe was just a plot device for everyone else. Even in her own book, she is lost and unknown.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife is presented as centered around a woman (Wendy) who’s found in Philadelphia with no memory and no ID. After a number of hospitalizations and a brief stay in a women’s shelter, she agrees to go to the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research to be studied/treated by Dr. Benjamin Strauss. Also involved with her care is Lizzy/Elizabeth, who arrives at the Institute for a fellowship, following a big fail in her work life. For Lizzie, it’s also an opportunity to return home, where her widowed mother still lives, and rekindle a friendship with her high school BFF. Along the way, we also meet Alice, Wendy’s daughter.
The premise of the book was interesting and the extensive information on memory and related theories gave me something to think about. I’d love to learn more about the author’s research for writing the book.
However, there were a few challenges. The story is told from multiple points of view and timelines, which led to confusion on my part. I also found the scientific detail to be too heavy and distracting. The biggest challenge was that at times it felt like Wendy was lost, and it was the Lizzie story, or the Lizzie/Dr. Strauss story, and they weren’t as interesting or likable characters.
Thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to read Mother Daughter Widow Wife in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Scribner, and Robin Wasserman for the opportunity to read and review this book. 4 stars for an intriguing book that will certainly activate all that gray matter in your brain! This is a somewhat complicated read, both with the massive amount of information given on memory as well as the way it is written. But stick with it - it's definitely worth it!

Mother, daughter, widow, wife - all various roles women play in our lives. But are those how we define ourselves or how others define us? And what does it cost us to put ourselves in those different roles? We are presented with 3 female characters in this book: Wendy Doe - a woman who took a bus to Philadelphia and is in a state of fugue amnesia - she has no recollection of her past and no memories whatsoever. Wendy's chapters are told in the past timeframe. Lizzie is the graduate student working for the esteemed Benjamin Strauss at his memory clinic. Wendy Doe is her research subject. We hear Lizzie's voice in the past as she's working with Wendy and in the present as Elizabeth, the widow. Alice is Wendy's daughter - we hear from her in the present time.

With me so far? This is a wonderful character study of women and their roles, their self-esteem, and how they change to fit men's ideals of them. It's definitely one of those books that makes you think - it's not an easy, breezy read. But it would be a wonderful bookclub selection.

This is a hard one to explain and frankly it takes a bit of patience at times but trust that it's worth it. It's the story of three women- Liz who is later known as Elizabeth, Alice, and Wendy. Wendy is Alice's mother and Lizzie's research subject. She suffers from fugue states, the first of which occurs when Lizzie is a research assistant. Then 20 years later, she disappears again and her husband, Alice's father, tells Alice that about the earlier incident, which leads her to Elizabeth. The name changes and tine period shifts could be distracting (and the same is true about Wendy) but the characters are so intriguing that you'll keep reading. There's also some interesting info about neuroscience and psychology. I'm not sure whether Wasserman is really trying to address the issue of identity or if this is about memory but it kept me engaged. Thanks to Netgalley for the Arc.

Wendy Doe is found in Philadelphia without an ID and no memory of who she is. She becomes a patient at Dr. Benjamin Strauss' Meadowlark Institute--basically her only alternative for being cast out on the streets. Dr. Strauss and his young student, Lizzie, study Wendy, fascinated by her fugue diagnosis. Meanwhile, years later, Wendy's daughter Alice is looking for her mother, who has disappeared again. Wondering if her mother's past disappearance--which she never knew about--could be tied to the current one--Alice searches out Benjamin Strauss and Lizzie. She discovers Lizzie is now a young widow and begins a journey into both her mother's past, and Lizzie's.

"Every daughter became a mother, every mistress a wife--every wife a widow."

This is a hard book for me to rate, even several weeks after finishing it. Is it a brilliant work examining womanhood and love or a frustrating tale that leaves you feeling unresolved? This is certainly a complex book that features complex science, emotions, and feelings. Wasserman has done her research, and there are pages and pages devoted to the science of dissociative fugue, amnesia, and more. I won't lie: it's a lot. There were times I found myself just skimming those sections, because it was a bit much for me.

I didn't care much for the character of Alice, and I'm not entirely sure why, because her mother is missing (presumed dead by suicide by everyone except Alice), and she's worried. But there's something about Alice that just didn't make her particularly sympathetic to me. As for Lizzie, even though she didn't make the best of choices, I liked her more. Maybe I identified better with her. We get to see Lizzie in the past and present, and Wasserman does a good job of capturing the yearning of loving someone who doesn't deserve you and the idea of becoming someone else for love. Even Wendy is hard to care about sometimes, because she just doesn't seem care herself. To her, her memory is a thing she's lost, but because she can't remember, she doesn't seem too concerned.

"'You don't get it: I don't not want it back, and I don't want it back. There is no it. You can't miss what never happened.'"

What was so hard with this book is that there were just so many words. Oh the words. Words about science, words about feelings, words, words, words. It just felt long. I wasn't entirely invested in the story, but I did want to find Alice's mother, but then everything just felt sort of eh and unresolved, and yeah. I don't know. So much thinking, not much happening. I think this novel probably presents some brilliant ideas and representations, but they went over my head. 2.75 stars, rounded to 3 here.