You Won’t Get Free of It

Real-life stories of mothers and daughters – of what we inherit, what we bury and what we, finally, find the courage to say – by the award-winning New Yorker staff writer.

'She is simply brilliant' Anne Enright
'A beautiful, thoughtful and probing writer' Daisy Johnson

You Won’t Get Free of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other and for themselves. Aviv explores the complexity of this relationship in seven essays, six originally published in the New Yorker and reconceived for this intimate, revelatory book.

Aviv writes about one mother searching for her vanished daughter; another who sacrifices herself for her daughters by working as a nanny for other people’s children. In the final story, a daughter’s traumatic experience is erased by her family, only to be recast by her mother, the writer Alice Munro, in stories celebrated around the world.

You Won’t Get Free of It is an astonishing exploration of the competing dynamics of knowing and unknowing, recognition and refusal, that shape our most foundational relationship.

PRAISE FOR STRANGERS TO OURSELVES

'An arresting work of profound empathy and insight' Patrick Radden Keefe
'Combines the poise of Janet Malcolm and the confessional bravery of Joan Didion' Vogue
'Profoundly intelligent' Guardian