Hedge

Delury (The Balcony) uses her protagonist to represent the frustrations that burden women whose desires are at odds with their roles as mothers. Filtered through the fierce love of a mother for her child, the book compassionately represents the messes people create and scramble to fix. Forty-year-old garden historian Maud wants a divorce; she separates from her husband by taking a garden restoration job in another state. Keeping the separation and her budding romance with a colleague from her two daughters creates a thorny situation when Maud’s depressed and emotionally unstable teenager Ella learns of her mom’s deception and acts out. The novel’s pace, which starts leisurely, starts careening when a crisis with Ella turns Maud’s life, and priorities, upside down. As Ella starts self-harming, the family attends counseling to confront this issue, and Maud desperately tries to restore her turbulent relationship with her daughter while her relationship with her husband turns ugly.